


Sing Me Something That I Can Understand

by Arsenic



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Drug Use, Hospitals, M/M, Overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2020-11-07 15:07:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20819327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: It's Ryan's choice to leave, really it is. He just had no idea how bad he'd be at it, is all.





	Sing Me Something That I Can Understand

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Scenic's "Take Your Time."
> 
> Thanks: First and foremost to my beta, sailorstkwrning, who had a HUGE job to fix the worst of the canon issues with this story and really stuck through it and made this fic a much better, cleaner story. Secondly, to my artist and mixer, sly_fuck and verbyna, respectively, for the care they put into making sure this story had wonderful enhanced content. Finally, to the BBB mods for running this juggernaut once again and making my experience smooth and enjoyable. Mwah, to all of you.

*******

**One Count**

Jon rubbed a hand over his face and said, "Stop." He said it quietly, and Ryan wasn't even sure how they'd heard, except that maybe both he and Brendon had gotten used to listening to Jon. Jon said, "Stop," again, even though they already had. He said, "I can't-- No, that's-- I don't _want_ to do this anymore."

Ryan tried to ask, "What?" but his throat hurt from how much he'd been screaming and he knew it didn't come out right.

Jon said, "I don't leave Cass and the cats and Marley back home in Chicago to come listen to you guys scream at each other and not get anything done. That's not what I'm here for."

Brendon made a face, but he also tucked his hands under his arms and said, "Sorry."

Ryan nodded, but didn't say anything. Ryan knew he had his faults, but he had no intention of becoming the reason Jon walked out on them. He was pretty sure Spencer still blamed Ryan for the whole Brent thing. And if Spencer didn't, he probably should have. Ryan nodded again, and let Brendon have his way for the rest of the session. This was Ryan’s band. He didn't need to have his way, but he sure as fuck needed his band.

*

When it was just Jon and Ryan, things felt like they had the first time around—possible. Ryan consciously didn’t think about that fact, or about how often it was just him and Jon nowadays. It made things easier, sure, but it didn’t _mean_ anything.

Brendon had written two whole songs completely on his own for Pretty. Odd. Ryan spent a lot of time not thinking about why Brendon had felt compelled to do so, or why Spencer had encouraged him. Ryan especially, especially stayed away from thinking about why he’d hated that Brendon had done so.

There was once (okay, maybe twice, or even three times) when Jon and he finished a song together and it made sense and sounded fun and there hadn’t been four weeks of arguing behind it, and Ryan thought, “I wonder—“

He never let the supposition get further than that. He _couldn’t_. After those two words the only thing he could think was _Spencer_, was _Brendon_, was _alone_. Ryan wasn’t good at alone. He knew his strengths and independence didn’t even make the list. Also, Spencer and Brendon.

It was fine, though. Spencer and Brendon were probably writing their own songs. The four of them could figure it out later. They would work out some way for everyone’s sound to be included and things would come together. The album might sound a little eclectic, the critics might bitch about its lack of coherency, but as much as Ryan wanted the critics to like his albums, he wanted his band to like each other a hell of lot more. They’d write songs in their own way, and they’d puzzle out a way to make it all fit. It could work.

*

It took about a week after the four of them finally started trying to record together again for Spencer to drag Ryan out of the studio by his shirt and hiss, "This wasn't what Jon meant."

Ryan pretended not to understand, which was a stupid tactic, but all he really had. Spencer just pushed Ryan hard enough that he hit the wall with slight force and said, "Stop being an asshole. Or, at least, have the decency not to be a mute asshole."

Ryan said, "Brendon's stuff is good."

"Yeah, all of a sudden, it's exactly what you want."

Ryan just shrugged. Spencer sighed. Ryan wished he didn't know that sigh was one Spencer reserved for him. The Ryan-is-being-a-moron sigh. Spencer had a different one for Brendon, and even for Jon, but Ryan heard the Ryan one most. Then again, he was Ryan, so that might have explained that, but at the moment it wasn't really making him feel any better. (Except for how it kind of was. Except for how nothing about Spencer had felt familiar in so long.)

When Spencer spoke again, he sounded hesitant. It took Ryan a moment to place the sound, because it wasn't something Spencer generally was around him. It took Ryan a second because Spencer kept getting further away. They’d sat right next to each other for a million hours coming back from South Africa, and for all Ryan could figure out, it was like Spencer had let him behind there. Still, when Ryan figured out Spencer’s emotion, he knew he was right. That was something.

Spencer asked, "Ry, um, you ever think that maybe this isn't what you want?"

"Uh. This?" Ryan didn’t usually try to play dumb twice in a conversation. For one thing, it annoyed Spencer. For another, it didn’t work, so what was the point? At that moment, though, Ryan could feel his fingers releasing the thick paper of his passport into a crowd that would keep it, cut his ties to this person he was stuck being. He felt the vineyard grass beneath his hands, and the sudden, drunken love that had seemed like an answer to everything, a way to begin again. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the feelings themselves, or the fact that he didn’t know how to explain them to Spencer.

"Y'know, like, the band."

Ryan blinked at Spencer, incredulous. "The _band_?"

Spencer just looked at him. Ryan repeated, "The band, like, the-only-thing-I-ever-wanted-my-whole-life-other-than-my-father-to-stop-drinking, the band? That band?"

"Wanted," Spencer said softly.

"What?"

"Wanted. Past tense. You were twelve years old when you started dreaming about it. You're nearly twenty-three. Shit changes, Ry. We grow. We drink when we said we never would. You cheated on your girlfriend despite having a thing about cheaters and how they're evil and shit. You stopped hiding behind makeup and learned how to sing and you don't really need us anymore, not really, not like then."

"You're not talking to Brendon, Spence, I don't--"

Spencer's eyes were infuriated when he put his hand on Ryan's chest. The touch was paradoxically gentle. "I know exactly who I'm talking to, Ryan Ross. Don't you fucking dare suggest I don't."

And okay, maybe Ryan had been a little jealous of all the time Spencer had been spending with Brendon, like Spencer'd finally figured out Ryan wasn't the best friend Spencer had signed up for and deserved. But still, "I'm not Brendon."

"No," Spencer said slowly. "No, you're Ryan, and that's always been more than enough. You've just never figured it out."

"You're wrong," Ryan said, his chest feeling tight and his throat hurting. "You're wrong about me not needing you."

"I'm not," Spencer said, and his eyes were a little sad. "But you can feel free to prove me wrong. Just, show me."

*

Jon stopped coming into the studio. Brendon, uncertainly said, “Maybe we should try writing apart some more?” And, with the same belief he had that the world could be held together by string, Brendon reassured them, “It’ll come together.”

Ryan took the excuse to write with Jon. He didn’t think about how Spencer was almost always right. It wasn’t as though they were the same now as they had been. Ryan couldn’t tell if he wanted Spencer to be right just for it to mean that things were still real between them, or if it would be better if Spencer were wrong, because that would mean things could be fixed.

Ryan certainly didn’t think about how easy it would be to make a whole album with Jon. Mostly, when he got the chance, he hooked up with Alex and didn’t think, because that was easiest, and just a little bit of chemical assistance made it possible.

Though by the time Spencer called and said, “Ry, let’s catch up,” for all his not-thinking, Ryan knew exactly what Spencer meant.

He knew even more when Spencer picked a place that didn’t mean anything to them. Ryan was aware he was the shitty friend in this equation, the one who couldn’t be counted on, but there were certain things he could do for Spencer. It wasn’t often that they came up, and Ryan had missed the signs once or twice, but now he could see it coming.

Spencer said, “I haven’t heard your voice in a month.”

Ryan swallowed. It had been thirty-six days. There had been texts, but they’d been short and largely about business. He said, “Spence.”

“Ryan—“

“I’ll leave. I can’t-- I can’t speak for Jon. But you don’t have to-- I’ll leave.”

After a long silence, Spencer said, “Tell me about your album.”

Ryan smiled, because that was usually enough to keep him from crying. “You’d hate it.”

*

Ryan figured out that maybe he should have paid attention to all the legal stuff before his fucking Google newsfeed informed him that his ex-bandmembers had taken on the band name. Alternately, he could have called Pete, assuming he’d had the nerve to say, _oh, thanks for picking me up out of that shithole I was living in, but I’ve got better things to be doing_ to someone he still believed in. Which he hadn’t.

Now, though, it was evidently a Thing, so he called Spencer and snarled, “What the fuck?”

Spencer said, "We have a contract, Ryan. Panic does."

“What else’d you get in the divorce that you forgot to mention?”

There was a pause, and just then, Ryan knew. He was glad he’d taken a hit before he’d called, glad that was the only way he could make himself do it, because now it seemed kind of funny, in the same way his father’s death had seemed impossible, ridiculous at first. He started laughing.

“Ryan—“

“You got the kids, too, didn’t you?”

And then Brendon—because evidently Spencer had put Ryan on speaker phone without mentioning that, asshole—asked, "What were you expecting?"

It occurred to Ryan that maybe he should have called Brendon sometime before now. But Ryan was awesome at collecting should-have-dones and shit at fixing anything afterward. And Brendon was _pissed_.

Ryan thought _say sorry,_. He thought, _say, no you're right, this--this is how it has to be_. Ryan said, "Now, all of a sudden, you _want_ my words?"

"Maybe I just don't want you to have them," Brendon said, sharp and mean.

There was a silence, and then whispering, but Ryan couldn’t make out anything being said.

It was Spencer who said, "What the fuck do you want, Ry? You don't want Panic. You don't want to have to pay a settlement fee for breach of contract. But you don't want to give anything up, either. So, what?"

Ryan hated that Spencer could always do that, always say the exact same things Ryan was saying in his head, but without any of the loathing, so that they sounded like they made sense. Ryan took a breath and swallowed his, _I want things to go back. I want things not to have changed._ "I didn't want this."

"Come up with a better solution," Brendon snapped. Ryan, who generally knew when things were already past alternate solutions, hung up.

*

Ryan had heard Brendon’s cover of “Three Little Birds” a few hours after Brendon had posted it. Jon found him wandering the canyons two hours later and said, “I come bearing herbal supplements.”

“I don’t want to laugh,” Ryan told him. “I want to pout.”

Ryan also wanted to fucking sleep without waking up with his limbs not responding to his brain. He wanted to wake up and not panic, not dive into a place that he couldn’t come back from, not until it threw him back from the edge, each time less whole than he had been before. He wanted to call Brendon and tell him he was a fucking asshole, who only knew how to make other people’s words mean something. He wanted to call Spencer and just tell him Ryan hated him. He wanted a lot of things that weren’t going to happen, so mostly, he wanted to pout.

“I know,” Jon responded somberly, “But I’m not giving you a choice.”

Ryan started walking away, but tripped over a root, which impeded his ability to stalk off. When Jon managed to keep from laughing, Ryan sighed. He was tired. He couldn’t get himself to even _try_ going back to sleep after the sleep paralysis attacks, and their frequency was somewhat alarming. “Okay, but there had better be potato chips, sour cream dip and Phish Food in this for me.”

“Do I seem like an amateur?” Jon asked.

Ryan just barely managed to keep from saying, _Compared to Spencer._ Jon smiled a bit sideways, like he knew all the same.

*

“Defiance” wasn’t the first song off the album, but it was the one that came off Ryan’s fingers the quickest. One tweet from Spencer to Brendon at the wrong time—so, any time—and Ryan was writing furiously, letting every damn impulse he’d had over the weeks since the split fill the page.

He could hear it in his head, or at least, fits and starts. It wasn’t usually like that. For the most part, the music took hours for a few chords and necessitated Jon being there, strumming back. But anger had always been a good motivator for Ryan, in both big things and small. He wasn’t sure how he categorized the creation of a new song.

He didn’t show it to Jon for a while. They were still set on the idea of an endless vacation, or something thereabouts, most of the songs already written during their time festival hopping, and Ryan wasn’t sure it would fit. In any case, he didn’t feel like sharing. Instead he tucked it away, pulling it out whenever something upset him, which, at the moment was about every other hour.

Cassie came in town, so Jon pretty much fell off the radar. Ryan hid at Z’s until she dragged him out. She was an easy person to follow: even when she didn’t know where she was going, she acted as though she did. Also, she was good about making sure he got home at some point, and not asking him for things he couldn’t give.

That last made him feel bad, and sometimes he wished she would ask, but he didn’t know how to say that. He suspected neither of them was the type to hold on too tight, which was dangerous, but maybe healthy, just this once.

Ryan wanted to ask Spencer, but every time he started texting, he found himself unable to send anything. Brendon, evidently, had no such compunction, because the third day Jon was off having lots of glorious sex and other committed-relationship-type-things, Ryan woke up to a hangover and a text.

It was a personal text from Brendon, consisting of a sendspace link. Ryan connected to it only to receive Brendon covering Radiohead’s “Anyone Can Play Guitar.”

Ryan didn’t want to admit that he still actively read Brendon’s tweets, and would have seen it whenever Brendon decided to share with the world. Instead, he texted back, “we alrdy covered radiohead,” and didn’t catch the first-person plural pronoun until it was too late. Brendon didn’t respond anyhow.

Brendon never tweeted about it, so Ryan figured it was a fanclub exclusive; Brendon had always been stubborn about trying to mature their listener’s tastes. Ryan almost texted to wish Brendon the best of luck with that, but he held back, because texting when he wasn’t getting any response was kind of pathetic.

Even more pathetically, Ryan created a folder on his computer labeled “Brendon is stupid and I hate him,” and put the file in there. It didn’t make him feel as victorious as he might have wished.

*

Ryan showed Jon “Defiance” after Cassie left, when Jon was mopey, and Ryan could lie and say he’d worked on it while Jon wasn’t around. Ryan wasn’t sure why he didn’t want to say that it had just been his thing, but he didn’t, and this gave him the chance not to.

Jon looked at it for a bit, then pulled his guitar to him for the first time since Cassie’s departure. He played it out to the chorus and said, “Catchy, Ry.”

Ryan smiled. Catchy was a good thing, it made people listen. He ignored the part of himself that knew Spencer would have said something different. He definitely ignored the part of himself that knew Brendon would have rolled his eyes and said, “Oh yeah, you’re so Up Against The Man.”

And the part that suspected Brendon would have sung it the way it was meant to be sung.

Ryan said, “So, yeah, I mean, it needs some filling out, but.”

“We should possibly think about getting ourselves the rest of a band.”

Ryan had thought about it. Then he’d locked himself in his room and taken slow, measured drags off cigarettes until it had no longer hurt to breathe. “Um, yeah. I can put out the word.”

“I have a friend who might be available for the bass.”

“Someone I know?”

“Andy Soukal?”

Ryan flipped through all the people he’d met when Jon would take them around Chicago, or when Tom was around. It didn’t ring a bell. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

“You’ll like him.”

Ryan didn’t precisely doubt it. He also didn’t say, “You should play bass.” Ryan was going to go forward, not backward. He’d had this talk with himself at least four times already.

“Ry?” Jon asked.

“Sorry,” Ryan said. “Just thinking.”

Jon looked at Ryan for a long couple of minutes. Then he dropped his head and began playing again. “The drumming on this puppy’s gonna be what makes it happen.”

*

It took a while for Ryan to dig up the last members of the band. Jon might have eyed Ryan more than a few times in a way that suggested he knew Ryan was stalling, but he didn’t actually _say_ it, and so long as nothing was out in the open, and Ryan didn’t have to admit to anything, he could take his time. It wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of options. There were always guys looking to be in bands, that was something Ryan never really had to worry about. It was everything afterward—the chemistry, work ethic, musical tastes—the little things.

Z told him, via email, “You should live in the moment.”

Ryan rolled his eyes and texted back, “Yes, oh wise one.”

He imagined her giggling, a country’s worth of distance between them. She didn’t take the advice back. Ryan imagined that was fair enough. Notably, she didn’t offer any advice on getting along with his band. So long as she stayed out of that quagmire, he would probably listen to most anything she said.

What she asked next was, “Wanna come out here? Help me throw a Halloween party? I think you know how we both feel about Halloween.”

Unfairly, this was later followed up by a tweet of her legs. LA wasn’t home, not really, nowhere particularly was. But Z was offering something that would bridge the gap, and Ryan wanted that too much to turn it down.

That said, attending a party without Brendon and Spencer was one thing; Ryan did that all the time and had since time immemorial (or, well, about two years ago). Throwing a party and not inviting them was something else. “You’re not coming to Alex’s?”

He had asked her in one of their rare, actual phone conversations and he could _hear_ her making a face. “New York is quite far away, Ryan Ross.”

Ryan couldn’t debate that. And he really didn’t want to get into a conversation about how that was maybe why it felt safe right now.

Z, who hadn’t yet entirely learned to read his silences, pressed the issue, “So, party?”

Figuring he could avoid explaining his hang ups, Ryan offered, “Maybe if we did it at your place.” At least then it might not really feel like his party. He could provide chips. Ryan was an expert chips shopper.

Z was silent for long enough that Ryan almost took the idea back, or at least mentioned the chips. Then she said, “You know what would be even better?”

“Z—“

“Hopping a plane to Chicago. Jon’s having one, right? We should crash.”

Ryan opened his mouth to say no, to say that really, she didn’t have to drag herself across the country for him. “Sounds fun.”

“Think of something fun for us to be on your flight back to me.”

And yeah, okay, maybe LA was a little too close to Brendon and Spencer for his tastes at the moment, but really, Z had _legs_. “I’ll do that.”

*

Jon had told Ryan he could wait to start working on the issue of finding a new label until they both got back to LA, but as much as Ryan liked inaction when he was ready for it, there were times when action was the only thing that kept Ryan from thinking things he did not want to think about.

He had talked around, with Alex and Z of course, and some other friends. They’d given him ideas on what might be the best fit for their band. After the fourth time he’d reached for his phone to call Spencer or Pete—and, okay, also after getting completely screwed by the label of his choice—he sat down and did what Spencer always did when making important decisions: made an Excel spreadsheet about the problem.

Three hours after he’d opened the worksheet, he had a color-coded pros and cons comparison of the three labels they were seriously considering, and a work-up of how to approach each one. There were symbols, too.

Ryan attached it in an email to Jon labeled, “A not very flowy flowchart about our label options.”

Afterward, he wandered out to the living room, where Alex was staring very thoughtfully at his salt and pepper shakers. Ryan said, “I made a chart. With color coding.”

“I made a dartboard full of places in LA and all its suburbs.”

Ryan paused. “Yours wins.”

“I haven’t managed to hit anything yet.”

“I only can when I’m high,” Ryan admitted. He didn’t point out that, so far as he could tell, said dartboard wasn’t even in the same room. Alex had lately been considering telekinesis a lot, and Ryan wasn’t going to be the one to burst that bubble for him.

“Weird.”

“It helps me solve puzzles, too.”

Alex looked interested, then mildly concerned. “Are you sure that’s not a genetic defect?”

“Not entirely, no.”

Alex nodded slowly. “I have a Rubik’s Cube.”

Ryan knew as much. He’d given it to Alex. He sat down at the table. “Got anything to help my skills along?”

Alex smiled. “Pretty sure I can dig something up.”

*

Jon called, confused, and Ryan tried to explain his Flowchart of Fail. Jon asked, “Are you back in LA?”

“As of yesterday,” Ryan confirmed.

“And other than the flight, have you left home or Greenwald’s since the listening party?”

Ryan came back with, “Have you?”

“I have cats,” Jon pointed out. “And a girlfriend.”

“I have Z. We’re in a civil dating relationship.”

“Civil? Because generally I’m more than that with the people I date.”

“It’s more like civil-union-civil. Like, something other than marriage-marriage.” _A Twitter marriage_, Ryan thought, with a twist of his lips, because, well, their July fake-marriage moment still sort of explained everything in his head.

Jon clearly hadn’t divined Ryan’s thought process, however. “Nothing you just said makes sense.”

Ryan shrugged. “It makes sense to us.”

“Is Z even in town?”

Ryan didn’t answer. Jon said, “So, the chart is supposed to be a flowchart, huh?”

“It has coordinated colors.”

“Can you maybe email me a key? Like, at least which direction to go in?”

Ryan bit back a sigh and didn’t think about how Spencer wouldn’t have needed the help. Instead he said, “Yeah, no problem. Say hi to Cass.”

“Yup,” Jon said, and hung up.

Ryan went into his email to send the information before he forgot, and there was another email from Brendon. Ryan tried to delete it without looking at it. He got as far as putting it in the trash before he went and opened it up, all the same.

Another song was attached inside, this time Peter Gabriel’s “Perspective,” which, honestly, who even listened to Scratch other than Brendon? Ryan got halfway through listening before having to shut it off and slam it into the Brendon is Stupid folder.

He called Z and said, “I think I need to unplug.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

Ryan looked away from his computer screen. “I dunno. Just detached, maybe.”

“Ry?”

“Yeah?”

“Go get a cup of coffee, in a café, and sit there for a while, okay?”

“And after that?”

“Walk down a busy street.”

Ryan wasn’t sure being in the middle of people with nobody to turn to was really the solution, but she had a point—it was better than sitting around his house. He sighed. “When are you coming home?”

“Have you figured out a Halloween costume for us yet?”

“I’ll work on it at the café.”

“There you go.”

*

In the midst of putting together an actual band and finalizing a contract with One Haven, Ryan lost track of time for a bit. He liked that feeling, when moments blurred and he didn’t have to have the distinct outlines of anything poking against his mind.

Occasionally, Ryan made himself pay attention to reality. His mortgage payments were a little out-of-control without any of the Panic royalties coming in. He wanted to call Ginger, who’d always been good for telling him what to do when it came to being an adult, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t appropriate. Spencer was definitely out.

Ryan missed his father. He suspected his dad would have given him bad advice anyway, but it still would have been something. Missing a crappy father figure wasn’t something he could talk to Z about, not really. Jon had been too new around the time that George had died for Ryan to know how to approach the topic with him, so he wrote long emails to Spencer and Brendon that he would never send.

When they weren’t finalizing the tracks or dealing with the minutiae of actually releasing an album, Ryan spent a lot of time reading. It wasn’t that he didn’t normally, but lately it had all been guilty pleasures. He’d gone straight through L’Engle’s _Door in Time_ series in a little over a week before re-reading every Palanhiuk for the third or fourth time.

He called the agent he’d worked with on the house at two in the morning and left a message on her work voicemail about wanting to sell the house. She called him back in the morning and didn’t act like had social issues that were more than she could deal with. (It was what had gotten her hired in the first place. At least, Ryan was pretty sure it was—Spencer had had a strong hand in the original decision.)

He said, “I’m thinking something smaller.”

She asked, “Have a location in mind?”

When Ryan had told Z he was considering a move, she’d recruited Alex for a little bit of a city tour of places where Ryan would have friends around. Z had written down a list of neighborhoods that Ryan had seemed happy with; he just had to find it. “Um. Can I email that to you?”

She was quiet for a second. Then she said, “Can I ask, are you unhappy with the current place for a reason? You haven’t been there that long. And since you’re calling me, I have to figure that you weren’t displeased with how I represented you last time.”

Ryan fidgeted a bit. “The house is great. It’s just kind of out of my price range at this point.”

“Got it,” she said easily. “Well, that’s no problem. There’s a couple of listing that I think you’re really going to love.”

“Yeah? You noticed I was picky last time, right?”

She laughed. “I did, in fact, notice. I come prepared.”

“It’s good that one of us does,” Ryan admitted. She just laughed some more.

*

Once they started discussing tour possibilities and logistics, it was easier to shut the rest of the world out. This part, when he could first get excited about idea of being away, was Ryan’s favorite part in the whole process. Nobody actually know where they were going, so anywhere could happen.

Granted, the last time “anywhere” had happened on a tour he’d managed to throw his most important document into a crowd full of screaming teenagers and almost make himself a native by sheer dint of being unable to get back into his own country. Ryan flinched away from the memory, from the pressing sense that he’d needed a tangible reason why it was okay for Spencer to just leave him behind, leave him somewhere strange and unknown and not look back. He told himself he had easier ways of getting out of his head now, and didn’t consider how much of an After School Special he might or might not have become by this point.

Ryan was fairly certain, in any case, that they couldn’t afford to get to South Africa. Ryan wasn’t certain they could afford to get to the other coast on the budget they were looking at. Jon seemed confident, though, and Jon was better with the technical aspects of touring than Ryan had ever been. He also realized he should have had Spencer teach him that stuff. He should have known he might need it.

The other guys seemed like they were better with this stuff than Ryan was, too, though, and that was something. They’d all spent time making budgets stretch and doing the things Ryan hadn’t done, even if maybe he should have.

Sometimes, Ryan wondered if he should regret Pete, regret that things had happened the way they had, but he couldn’t manage it. Not even now, when Pete was one big ache at the center of Ryan’s diaphragm. Ryan hadn’t believed in miracles until Pete. Now, he couldn’t stop believing. He wasn’t entirely sure which state sucked more.

It didn’t matter, though, at least not right now. What mattered was that he could go into the studio, and record songs that made him calm inside and they would get to people who would listen, and hopefully feel the same way. At the very least, he hoped they would feel something.

He told himself that so long as he had the music, and a band, he was doing fine. He was even mostly sure it was true.

*

Ryan was glad they were leaving LA in a van, not a bus. It would start to smell more quickly and be less comfortable to sleep in, but at least there wouldn’t be the kind of memories that he’d have to fight every damn time he stepped into the thing. And it made it easier to feel the road beneath him, which was reassuring, a reminder that he could go anywhere he wanted.

At the first few shows, Ryan was intensely, painfully glad to have Jon there, with his ability to fix stuff and talk to fans. He couldn’t remember playing in spaces this small after their popularity had begun, was pretty sure they hadn’t. And after a while there had been Zack and his ability to keep away anything or anyone who might get a little too excited or a little too close.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like the fans, it really wasn’t. He knew it came off that way sometimes. Mostly it was just that he didn’t know how to respond. And there was the part of him that saw too much of himself in them, remembered how Pete had made his heart pound, made him feel like the world made sense for short segments of time. Ryan wasn’t Pete Wentz, would never be, and it left him feeling like he hadn’t upheld his part of the bargain, even if they never seemed to see it that way. Half the time the crowding of waiting, eager bodies was so intense, he had a hard time remembering how to spell his name.

Still, it got easier. Dua was good for distraction, and Eric was surprisingly protective in a way that reminded Ryan of Zack, even if it was distinctly different. After the first few shows, Ryan even stopped scanning the crowd, hoping for faces he knew he wouldn’t see. He told himself that he wouldn’t go to their shows, either. He even thought it might be true, at least a little bit.

The actual performing got a little easier, too, although not much. It was all right when he was talking to Jon up there: Jon knew how to make Ryan focus, and only see him. Jon was a little bit like Brendon that way, only Brendon had always been too damn bright to look away from, even when they weren’t talking. And Spencer had always been at Ryan’s back, just in case.

But at least for those few moments when Jon and he were telling tall tales and laughing at jokes that only they seemed to get, those times Ryan could feel comfortable in his own suits, at home in skin that had never fit him all that well to begin with. And if he could get himself started on a song, something that actually meant something—mostly “Defiance” and “The Other Girl,”—then he could remember how to breathe in between sentences.

The crowds yelled regardless, and Ryan pretended that it was because of this person he’d become, rather than the person he’d been. Nobody was going to tell him any different.

*

April came suddenly and without any warning. Ryan found himself shopping online for gifts four times before stopping himself, reminding himself that Brendon wouldn’t appreciate it anyhow. It felt like not brushing his teeth after waking up, though, wrong and a little dirty. The last time he hadn’t celebrated Brendon’s birthday had been before the two of them had met. Even recognizing that was still less than half his life, Ryan couldn’t say that he felt it mattered too much. Years with Brendon in them just occupied too much of his remembered life.

On the eve of Brendon’s actual birthday, Z met up with the tour and took Ryan out. Somewhere between talking about taking a hot air balloon ride and learning Cantonese, Ryan got trashed in a way reminiscent of his dad, rather than of having a good time on a free night. He woke up the next morning with a hangover that outdid even the worst of the ones he’d had during his first few months hanging with Alex and considered death as a serious option before throwing up everything he had ever eaten.

Z brought him coffee and aspirin and said softly, “So, um. That was a little bit of overkill.”

Ryan closed his eyes and drank the coffee. It didn’t settle well, but he knew it was his only chance, so he made himself keep sipping. Finally he rasped, “I hate Brendon Urie.”

“Sure, babe,” she said in the tone she had for when she didn’t believe a word he was saying.

Ryan made himself open his eyes. It hurt, but he kind of liked that at the moment. It felt predictable and almost safe. “What would you do if it were Tenn?”

He didn’t bring up Charlotte. It wasn’t far, and Ryan wasn’t up for a fight, in any case.

“Fuck, Charlotte was back enough. Fold myself up in bed and not move. Ever.”

“Liar,” Ryan said. They both knew she was the stronger of them, so if Ryan was still partially on his feet, she would be too.

“No, Ry.” She shook her head. “Our strength has to come from somewhere. If it gets taken away—“

“We find new strength.”

She looked at him with what Ryan suspected was pity. She must have felt merciful, though, because she didn’t mention that there were some things that simply couldn’t be replaced. She did say, “I think he’d, I mean, if you called—“

Just the thought made Ryan’s stomach heave again. She sighed and held his hair off his forehead, even though nothing much was coming up.

When he had settled, she asked quietly, “You gonna eat before you get in the van?”

“Probably not the best idea,” he mumbled.

“I’m gonna run and get a snack, for later. You okay on your own?”

Ryan rolled his eyes at her. That really hurt, but her grin was worth it. She kissed the top of his head. “You’re such a paradox.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a _girl_,” Ryan grumbled.

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Neither does _anyone_,” Ryan explained. “That’s the point.”

She straightened up to leave. When she was out the door she called, “You should text him.”

Ryan flipped off the space where she’d been.

*

Three days later, PJ Harvey’s “Civil War Correspondent” showed up in Ryan’s email box from Brendon. Ryan had to look it up by the lyrics because he’d been _ten_ when she released it, for fuck’s sake. Brendon had been nine.

Ryan went though her entire discography after that and decided that while Brendon hadn’t managed to sound quite as pissed off as she often did, he’d outstripped her melancholy by just enough for Ryan to feel bad that he hadn’t said happy birthday. Ryan sent the two words back by email, feeling empty and just a little bit mean. Brendon, predictably, didn’t respond.

Jon noticed there was something up. Ryan could tell from the alternating frustrated glances when Jon thought Ryan wouldn’t see and the fact that Jon had supplied him with some extra good product out of the blue. He didn’t say anything, though, and Ryan knew Jon thought it was just about the missed birthday. That was fine, better than fine. Ryan didn’t want to talk about it.

Instead Ryan asked him, “If you got a tattoo, what would it be?”

“I don’t like needles,” Jon said, which was something Ryan already knew.

“I know, but, let’s say it could be done differently. By magic, whatever, it doesn’t hurt, what would it be?”

“Haven’t really thought about it.”

Ryan did his best to actually facially express exasperation. Jon was pretty good at reading him, so he wouldn’t need to go over the top, but it still took more effort than it had with the others.

Jon got it. He asked, “Why is this important?”

Ryan should have thought up an answer to that that wasn’t the real answer ahead of time. Especially since the real answer involved his current struggle not to get Brendon and Spencer inked on him in a place that only he and Z would ever see, in a way not even she would understand. He wasn’t sure if that was more like taking a part of them that they couldn’t get back, or the exact opposite. Even if it was giving over something of himself, though, he suspected that was already a moot point. People who weren’t missing parts of themselves didn’t think like this, Ryan was fairly sure.

Finally Ryan said, “These things tell you a lot about a person, Walker.”

“You know a lot about me, Ross.”

“It’s a tour game.”

“I know all the tour games,” Jon said. “Probably more than you.”

“I invented this one.”

“Clever.”

“Jon.”

Jon laughed. “Maybe a portrait of the cats. Or, I dunno, a calligraphy ‘C’. Something about the stuff that matters.”

It didn’t pass Ryan’s attention that he wasn’t on that list. “See, that wasn’t so hard.”

“Just for that, we’re playing Truth or Dare.”

“I hate you,” Ryan told him.

“The feeling is mutual, friend.”

*

Ryan wasn’t terribly surprised when he caught the Cold of Death. He _always_ caught it on tour, and that was before he was in an even more confined space. Jon said, “You’re worse than Typhoid Mary.”

Ryan didn’t argue. He also didn’t call Z, because he was pretty sure that wasn’t the kind of relationship they had. He wasn’t entirely sure how they defined their relationship, but it definitely included a lot of sex, and sniffling miserableness was not sexy. Ryan had seen it more than enough times on Brendon to be absolutely positive of this.

He couldn’t call Spencer or Ginger and his own mom really wasn’t going to give a shit, though, if she was true to the pattern of the last few years, she might at least pretend to. Ryan kept that option in reserve and in its stead tweeted to keep himself occupied and distract his focus from the fact that his own body was trying to kill him.

Twitter was reassuring in that way where Ryan couldn’t really tell if he was just talking to himself or not. Even if he was, he could tell himself he wasn’t, and that was evidently all he needed these days.

Fans noticed, of course, since he sounded a bit like cats being tortured, recorded and then remixed. There was nothing for it, though. The tour was where they were making what cash they were off the album, really, and Ryan wasn’t going to be the guy who punked out and denied the rest of them a night’s pay.

He started ordering tea at every coffee shop, diner, hole in the wall, whatever they passed and dousing it with lemon, if any could be found. He went so far as to bring cups of it on stage. When Murray caught the cold, Ryan extended an olive branch by way of being the one to ferret out the lemons.

Jon, when it came to be his turn, was not so easily appeased. He required honey, as well, which wasn’t always as easy to find. White took it with surprising magnanimity and Andy whined like a three-year-old, but also got over it the fastest.

Ryan cursed the universe and anything that might run it for the fact that his also lasted longer than any of the others. Jon explained, “It’s because you have no insulation.”

Ryan cracked an eye from his attempt at sleep and croaked, “What does that have to do with me having a cold?”

“Insulation is good for all kinds of shit, not just keeping a guy warm.”

“Now you’re just making shit up,” Ryan told him tiredly.

Jon was quiet for a second before he asked softly, “Not as good at it as Spence, huh?”

Ryan sighed, and curled up against Jon by way of apology. Jon clearly took it as intended. He wrapped an arm around Ryan and squeezed him in against his warmth and steadiness. Ryan dipped his head into the hollow of Jon’s neck and Jon brought his other arm up, mussing Ryan’s hair before pulling him into a tighter hug.

*

Coming off tour was always a bitch, mostly because Ryan always thought he wanted it--_wanted_ to sleep in his own bed and know where the hell he was and eat something that wasn’t soaked in grease—until he was actually home, and everything was too damn silent and still.

He called Alex and asked, “Are you having a party?”

Alex was silent for a moment and then said, philosophically, “I _could_.”

“Yes please,” Ryan said and then went over to Alex’s.

Alex was dependable in this sort of situation, and had roughly sixty people or so around within a few hours. Ryan did a line early in at the party, but even that and the crowd didn’t help. He could still hearing the emptiness of his house. The coke made everything louder, closer, didn’t let Ryan think or feel. Or, at least, everything flashed too quickly inside his head to follow, and that made things easier.

He woke up the next morning in a bed he didn’t remember getting into. On the plus side, there wasn’t anyone in it with him. Not that Ryan was opposed or anything, he just liked to remember those kinds of things.

Everyone else in the house was clearly still out, so Ryan made himself some coffee, texted Jon and Z random tidbits, and stared out the kitchen window for a while. Some dude Ryan didn’t know stumbled in and asked, “Can I—“ gesturing desperately at the coffee pot. Ryan made the international symbol for go-right-ahead.

The guy got his mug full and stumbled back out of the kitchen. That was fine with Ryan. He might want to talk, but he sure as hell didn’t feel like small talk.

Eventually Alex appeared, sitting across the table from Ryan. Ryan said, “As far as I can tell, nobody took a picture of me this time.”

Alex laughed, but not in the way he did when he was actually amused. “I’m more careful than I appear.”

Ryan suspected Alex was just luckier than he generally appeared, but he kept the thought to himself. “Thanks. For,” he gestured randomly.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “First couple of days are the fucking worst.”

Alex’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything else, and Ryan let it go. Their issues over bands that no longer really existed were different, but each explosive in their own ways. The two of them accepted that each other got it, and left well enough alone.

“I could make some more coffee,” Ryan offered.

“Yeah. That’d—thanks.”

*

At first, Ryan thought he was having auditory hallucinations, or, at the very least, just imagining shit. But when he turned around, his elbow banging into the bar, and sure enough Brendon was standing there, calling, “Ryan!”

He was smiling, too, the shithead. Ryan blinked and stood where he was until Brendon reached him, coming no closer than arm’s length. Brendon was bouncing on his toes in a way that had meant he was nervous, back when Ryan was allowed to believe he knew these things. Ryan thought about saying, _hi_, or _come here often?_ seeing as how they were both in fucking Hooters, or really any number of perfectly logical things to say to someone he hadn’t seen in the better part of a year. Instead he said, “’Oh Canada’ by Classified?”

Brendon grinned at that, though. “I was feeling a little street.”

Ryan would have rolled his eyes, but he’d had to Google the song, so maybe Brendon was growing hip hop roots or something. “So, um—“

“It’s really busy in here.” Brendon flagged down the bartender.

Ryan nodded. “Well, y’know. The wings.”

Brendon practically _jumped_ he was bouncing so hard. “Wanna, I dunno, sit together? We could probably get a table easier that way.”

Ryan opened his mouth to say no, and Brendon interjected, “I’ll get the wings.”

Somehow, not of his own will, Ryan mumbled, “Yeah, okay.”

He had to work to follow then, because Brendon was off through the crowd like a shot.

*

Brendon talked non-stop, even as they were both considering what to order. Ryan knew there’d been a time when that had bothered him. Now it was just calming, and Ryan kind of hoped the waitress never came back and interrupted. Of course, that wasn’t the way Ryan’s life worked.

In any case, Ryan needn’t have feared, because Brendon just engaged her in conversation until they had both ordered, and then picked up where he’d left off about his niece’s descent into the netherworld of “Babysitting Club” books. Ryan said, “I read one of those when I was a kid.”

Brendon stopped, blinking. Then he said, “You? Ryan Ross? Formerly of Panic at the Disco?”

Ryan controlled his own wince. Brendon’s eyes darkened slightly, but he didn’t apologize, he just waited. Ryan shrugged. “I was stuck somewhere, I don’t remember. Maybe it was school, or something. All I know is my dad had forgotten to pick me up and it was the only reading material available.”

“Oh to have had pictures.”

“I’m sure Spence—“ Ryan felt something like electricity run through him.

“Ry?”

Ryan shook his head. He needed to think. He told Brendon, “Just remembering something.” He hadn’t said Spencer’s name aloud in over eight months. Evidently, he’d been right to worry.

Brendon said softly, “Yeah, he’s got some doozies of you.”

Ryan made himself train his gaze on Brendon, who was here and talking to him. He dragged up the response, “Mutually assured destruction, don’t you ever doubt it.”

Brendon smiled, just a little, sharp and unsure. “I don’t.”

Ryan took a sip and the bubbles of his Sprite burned all the way down. Brendon asked, “How’ve the performances been?”

“Solid. Good audiences. The club thing’s—“ _It would have been fun to do. With you. The first time around._ “More my style.”

“But you can actually see their faces in clubs,” Brendon said softly, knowingly.

Ryan hated him a little for understanding. All he said was, “Not if you don’t look.”

“Jon provide enough distraction?”

Ryan didn’t say, “Not nearly as much as you always did.” He didn’t say, “Yeah, enough.” He looked away from Brendon, and appreciated the fact that Brendon changed the subject then, off on something random again, something he could ramble about for hours without needing Ryan’s input. It was safer that way.

*

Jon called and asked, “You get lost, or just forget we were hanging with Murray tonight?”

“Shit, sorry, lost track of time,” Ryan said. He hung up and started to think of how, exactly, he was going to explain what he had been doing. He put a twenty on the table and said, “I have to—“

“Run,” Brendon said, but it wasn’t bitter. “Yeah, they tell me people with lives sometimes do that.”

Ryan flipped him off. “Listen, this was—“

When it was clear Ryan wasn’t going to come up with an adjective, Brendon somewhat hesitantly offered, “Good?”

Ryan nodded sharply, not trusting himself to open his mouth. Brendon clearly didn’t have the same problem, as he said, “You could try not being a stranger.” He pushed the twenty back across the table. “On me.”

“Bren—“

But Brendon had taken out his phone and was making a serious show of paying attention to whatever he was texting. Ryan thought about trying to get his focus back, but he really was running late. He took the twenty.

When he got to the first stop sign, he texted Brendon. “Next one’s on me.”

*

Ryan wasn’t shocked to find the cover of Great Big Sea’s “Something To It” in his email less than two days later. It probably meant Brendon had layered the fucking thing all by himself in some hotel room and it still didn’t really surprise him. He sent back the message, “You didn’t. Ruin my day.”

After a few minutes, he sent a second one. “Was I supposed to get something from the Classified cover?”

Brendon responded, “Canadians really like beaver.”

Ryan played with the notion that that might be a metaphor for the better part of a day before deciding that no, there was just something wrong with Brendon. Not anything newsworthy on that front.

Ryan made himself leave the chain there. He needed to spend time with Jon, who was very significantly Not Talking to Ryan about having sneaked away to have wings with Brendon. Ryan had tried to explain, “There was no sneaking,” especially since he’d told Jon once he’d finally gotten to Murray’s house—well before Brendon had tweeted a picture of the event—but Jon clearly wasn’t buying it.

Ryan had called Tom, because Ryan knew how to ask for help when it was necessary. Tom had said, “I dunno, Ry. I think he imprinted on me, or something.”

“What does that even mean, Conrad?”

“Well, like, for a guy whose own band broke up, he has a very specific understanding of being on the outs of a band.”

Tom had a point, but there was also the fact that, “Our band didn’t break up. I left it, and he followed. Or, I don’t know, he was going to leave, but I did first? Something.”

“Wow, semantics.”

“Not really.”

“They’re playing your songs and you think he’s not feeling just a little bit like he got the boot?”

Ryan rubbed his forehead. “It sounds really fucked up if I say that wasn’t about him, doesn’t it?”

“Probably would, except I know you’re right. But, like, we’re all the center of our own lives, right?”

Ryan wondered idly if Tom had been reading self-help books. “I take your point. Just. I mean, the thing is—“

“You think you owe him your loyalty but you can’t just give them up like that?”

Ryan was impressed. “You missed your calling.”

“I’ve worked at coffee shops for forever, Ross. The only thing that would have prepped me more would have been a bar.”

Ryan bit the inside of his cheek. “Do I owe him that loyalty?”

Tom sighed. “I dunno. It’s not like he left just for you. He left because you were doing something he wanted to do. That’s not really the same. I mean, I feel like as his best friend my answer should just be yes, and I kinda wish it was, but sometimes shit is complicated.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said.

“Sorry,” Tom told him.

“Not your fault.”

“All the same.”

*

The next time Ryan found himself taking a hit was at another party. He knew it should tell him something that he did it when Z wouldn’t see. It didn’t make his thought process any clearer, but the speed of his thoughts made them not matter quite so much.

He wrote six songs after getting home, still riding the high. In the morning, he trashed all of them without looking at the words.

When he finally bothered to get dressed, he texted an offer of pizza—the good stuff, not Dominos—to anyone who would come and help him continue unpacking. White texted, “How long’ve you been living there?”

_Almost seven months._ Ryan texted back, “Blow me.”

When White showed up for pizza he said, “If only you were my type.”

Murray showed up an hour later, and Andy predictably came straggling in right as the pizzas were arriving. After that, the unpacking got a little more recreational. White looked a little uncomfortable when Ryan accepted the offer of a pick-me-up, so Ryan went to the bathroom, out of eye range, to actually take the stuff.

Ryan got more unpacking done in that afternoon than he had in months. And if he had to call Murray and ask where the hell they’d put Ryan’s third favorite pair of boots a few weeks afterward, well, nobody always remembered those kinds of things. And it wasn’t completely odd that Ryan had decided his shoes would nicely compliment the utilities closet. Ryan was just a little bit different in how he went about organizing his house.

Z said, “Maybe when you’re doing shit you have to remember, you should do it sober.”

This was, admittedly, not a bad point. Still, “It gets done _faster_ the other way.”

It was a practical argument. Even Jon hadn’t really known what to say in response. Z, however, came back with, “Faster but worse isn’t really faster, Ry. It’s stupider.”

Ryan coiled up inside, associating the criticism with things that weren’t fair to her. She wasn’t mean, she was just open. They were a little too much alike in that way. She sighed, “Ry—“

“It’s not as if you’ve never done it.”

Something tightened in her expression and he was apologizing before he even knew what to say, but she stopped him with a hand to his mouth. She asked, “Since when is your goal to make all the same mistakes I’ve made? Anyone has made, for that matter?”

From behind her hand, Ryan answered, “Maybe if I did, I’d actually learn something.”

“There are things nobody needs to know.”

Ryan knew that was the truth. He knew the fact that he sometimes needed the feeling now more than _wanted_ it was dangerous. He knew alcohol wasn’t the only thing that fed on a person’s weaknesses. What he didn’t know was how to just stop.

*

Ryan knew Jon was writing his own stuff. He suspected Jon had started while they were still on the road. Ryan was writing his own stuff, too. Hell, Ryan was pretty sure the other guys were each at least fucking around with harmonies, if nothing else. That was how a second album was made. He knew from experience.

He didn’t really ask how it was coming along because Jon liked to do things on his own time and Ryan didn’t want him to feel rushed. Ryan suspected that, unlike Spencer, Jon didn’t always catch onto the fact that Ryan only asked about things when he was genuinely interested, as opposed to feeling some sort of bizarre need to negatively motivate others.

Instead he let Jon have his own space. Of all of them, Jon had always needed it the most when they came back from tours, and if it seemed like it was taking Jon longer than usual to get past that this time, the tour had also been a lot more flu-ridden, and grime-infested and well, van-oriented than their previous tours together had been.

Then, because what Ryan had needed was for one more thing to go wrong between the two of them, the van got stolen. Ryan Skyped the label after he and Alex had done their totally-professional canvassing of LA, and Murray had helped him fill out a police report. One of the people in legal sent him the correct insurance forms. He made Murray come over and fill them out with him. Forms with legalese evidently scared him now that last time they’d involved him losing his band name and all his songs.

Ryan had still been the last one to see the trailer. He was pretty sure he’d locked it. He hadn’t been high; he knew that much. He just lived in the kind of area where he probably should have put something with that much equipment in it in the garage immediately. He could’ve left his car in the drive. It sure as fuck would have been less hassle to replace and meant fewer people being royally pissed at him.

When the t’s were crossed and i’s were dotted, Ryan let Alex take him on some kind of hiking trip that involved a lot of seeing nature through the lens of chemical alteration. Ryan fell out of a tree at one point, but luckily, he hadn’t been able to climb that far, so it had just ended with a lot of bruises, and one seriously wicked scratch.

Z laughed when he explained, which he thought was pretty fair. He considered tweeting about it, but felt like his misadventures were almost predictable at this point. Instead he PMed Brendon with the picture.

Brendon wrote back, “Always so full of grace. The Royal Ballet feels your loss keenly.”

For some reason that Ryan couldn’t instantly explain to himself and didn’t really want to dig around trying to figure out, Brendon’s use of the word “keenly” made his stomach ache. Ryan had taught him that one, back when Brendon had honestly believed that Ryan could change world events through sheer willpower and become Poet Laureate if he just put himself out there enough.

Ryan went and took something to keep his mind off the shifting nature of relationships and on how much he liked colors, or some shit like that. So long as it wasn’t Brendon or Jon or Spencer, Ryan could compromise.

*

Murray showed up at a party Ryan was at and asked, “There a reason you haven’t been returning anyone’s phone calls?”

Ryan tried to think about that, really he did, but it was way past the part of the evening where thinking was particularly easy. Too many words were cluttering up his mind, it made him want to laugh, the franticness of it. He never had this many words when he sat down to write, then they all just went away.

He must have said something aloud, because Murray said, “Yeah, okay.”

Ryan grinned at him for getting it. Murray didn’t grin back. Instead he said, “Are you even aware Jon went back to Chicago?”

“Cassie’s there,” Ryan told him, feeling pretty profound, all things considered.

Murray seemed unimpressed by Ryan’s revelation. “Yeah, Ry. The band, however, is not.”

“True,” Ryan agreed.

“How much did you take, Ry? Do you even remember?”

Ryan made the international sign for “whatever someone gave me” with his hands. Evidently Murray didn’t know that sign, because he rolled his eyes. “Have you even been sober in recent memory?”

Ryan told him—very soberly—“I have it on good authority that I am more fun this way.”

“Your authorities are assholes,” Murray responded tightly.

Ryan frowned. He couldn’t remember exactly who’d said that to him, but the guy had been at one of the parties, so he couldn’t be that bad. And there had been that other girl, who knew…maybe Tennessee?

Murray said, “Clean yourself the fuck up and call Jon. Unless this is some cunning plan to break up your new band and start a solo career, but honestly, Ry, self-interest and all, I’m telling you, not a good idea.”

Ryan frowned even more. “Solo career?”

That made no sense. Ryan had never wanted a solo career, not even at the times when Brendon was driving him completely crazy.

Murray sighed. “Maybe you should call Urie, too?”

Ryan blinked. Murray told him, “You’re talking out loud.”

“Huh.”

Murray rolled his eyes again. “C’mon, I’m taking you home.”

“You just got here.” At least, Ryan thought he had.

“Yeah, well, you’re more fun sober.” He took Ryan’s arm, and all-but frogmarched him out of the house. Ryan wasn’t really resisting, he just couldn’t exactly remember how his feet worked.

*

Ryan cleaned up for a few days—well, two. Long enough to call and see what Jon was up to, long enough to check out what he’d been writing while high, long enough that the cravings got somewhere beyond painful and into mildly excruciating. He told himself it was something, and that he’d last longer next time.

Besides, it wasn’t like he got nothing done while he was flying. There had been _so_ much writing. Granted, a lot of it wasn’t exactly transferable into lyrics, but then, neither was a lot of Pete’s shit when he first put it down. Ryan shoved that thought away with a line. He didn’t want to think about Pete.

Jon had seemed kind of distant when they’d talked. Ryan had told him that the insurance company said they were processing the forms, but it could take up to six to eight weeks. “That’s not that big a deal, though, I figure, because we were gonna take some time to write anyway, right?”

“Yeah, Ry.”

“They said we’d probably get everything, there didn’t seem to be any reason why not.”

“That’s good.”

“I figure we can probably replace some of the stuff with newer, since I valued a lot of stuff at the price necessary to replace. But we could also be thrifty.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

Ryan had tried a different tactic then, even though his head had been pounding and all he’d really wanted to do was go and get high in the privacy of his bedroom, thanks. “How’s Cass and menagerie?”

“Warm and fuzzy,” Jon had said.

Ryan wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, since it was hard to argue with statements of pure fact and questionable decency. “You gonna stay long?”

“Probably. I can write from here, too.”

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed. He hadn’t said, “I kinda thought we were gonna write together.”

“I’ll text you later.”

“Um, okay,” Ryan said and waited a while before hanging up his phone, even though he knew Jon was already gone.

And that was the kicker. He knew that part of why Jon was acting this way was because Ryan was the fuck up who partied and got their shit stolen, he _understood_. But half the partying was just to get away from Jon’s emotional radio silence. Ryan had never learned how to take that, not from his father, and certainly not from his friends. There were more reasons than one why he couldn’t just email Spencer.

He comforted himself with the fact that this time, at the end of the day, there would be nobody to blame but himself and his own self-destructive tendencies. It wasn’t as comforting as it had been when he was a teenager.

*

Brendon sent Ryan a quiet, contemplative cover of Joan Baez’s “Diamonds & Rust” in an email that said nothing more than, “Dinner?” Then again, that was one word and one punctuation mark more than all the other emails had contained, so Ryan guessed that was progress.

Ryan listened to the cover on repeat for an hour before getting up the nerve to type back, “When/where?”

Then he spent a day and a half pretending he didn’t have an internet connection while trying hard to stay clean and—except for a few hours here and there, mostly when he managed to actually fall asleep—failing. He got back online to discover Brendon’s answer consisting of the name of a Mexican place, a date three days from that day and a time of six in the evening.

Ryan took forever to type the words, “See you there.”

He didn’t ask if Spencer would be there. He didn’t ask to bring Jon. It felt weirder than it had the last time, maybe because they were actually planning the event. Or maybe because Ryan had a deep belief that each Hooters was a little bit like the Vegas strip—it coexisted with real space and time, but on some sort of parallel dimension—whatever happened in one wasn’t necessarily real outside the confines of that Hooters. LA, despite all the hype, was all too real at times, its Mexican restaurants included.

Ryan changed his pants four times before he went and tried desperately not to do a line. In the end he couldn’t do it, couldn’t get himself out of the house sober, but he felt the fact that it was a small line mitigated the offense.

Brendon, Spencer and Zack were all waiting when Ryan arrived. For a second, he had to think to remember the mechanics of breathing. Brendon’s smile was bright enough that Ryan had to wonder if it was the drugs talking. There had been a time when Brendon had almost always had that smile for him, but that time was long past, so much so that Ryan could barely remember it. (Or, well, he liked to pretend that it wasn’t important enough to be burned into his memory.)

Zack gave him a noogie when he got close enough and Spencer said, “Hey,” casual and calm and not at all like someone who had always known Ryan better than he knew himself.

Ryan ate compulsively while Brendon and Zack did all the talking. They talked about their families, Brendon bragged about his new guitar and Zack did a sitting re-enactment of the way Brendon had totally wiped out and almost drowned earlier in the week. Brendon talked about the stuff that sucked about owning a house and the parts that were awesome. Zack talked about video games, Brendon raved about Arcade Fire and pretty much anything that didn’t really pertain to Ryan, Jon, and Spencer or their bands.

Spencer laughed when something funny was said, and ate. He was sitting across from Ryan, keeping his feet carefully on his side of the table. It made it a little hard for Ryan to swallow.

In the middle of dinner, Brendon trailed off, his grin lessening slightly. “So, um. You haven’t said much.”

Ryan’s mind was still riding the wave of everything Brendon and Zack had said, soaking it up and regurgitating it, faster and out of order. Ryan managed, “My life isn’t as exciting as you people, it seems.”

“Tell us something anyway,” Brendon pressed, but his voice was soft, as if he was expecting to be rejected.

“I wish I trusted myself to take care of a dog,” Ryan told them, which was the closest he could get to, _I miss you._

Brendon rocked back and forth slightly. “You could borrow mine. For playtime, and stuff.”

Spencer didn’t offer. Ryan wasn’t surprised, not really, but the sting of it was sharp nonetheless.

Ryan wasn’t entirely sure borrowing Brendon’s wouldn’t just make it worse, but he said. “That—maybe.”

Brendon said, “Way to commit.”

Ryan would give him that, but at least Ryan actually meant it when he said maybe, rather than just using it as a stalling tactic. He thought that should count for something.

*

When Ryan’d been a kid, hockey had been something he would do because it made his dad smile at him, real smiles, not the tired ones Ryan got sick of seeing. When he’d first started back up again, it had been because it was something from before the band, like maybe if he could remember parts of himself before all the changes, he could be sure he wasn’t just a suit of skin hiding nothing.

Now it was a way to get out all the anger that had somehow built up inside him when he wasn’t paying attention. It was better to attack on the ice, his opponent fully expecting it, than to say something that made Z flinch or Murray say tightly, “Stop being a dick.”

He didn’t care that he was generally smaller than the others, that he bruised and broke pretty easily when slammed or thrown or tripped. He cared that when he was doing the slamming or throwing or tripping, just for that moment, he felt like he had control over something. It was rare that anybody even looked at you sideways for going a little batshit on the ice.

In the beginning, Alex had sometimes watched and laughed, called Ryan “Tiger” and then gotten him high, clearly attempting to mellow him. Z had mostly liked to get to him after a game and a shower, when the endorphins were still running high and he was none too careful. Back when he was still sobering up periodically, he’d be unable to talk to her for looking at the marks. Back then, she would glare at him and say, “What, this make me less of a girl for you?”

Z’s gender politics were complicated, even when Ryan was at full capacity. He’d generally declined to answer that question and made it up to her a foot rub, or home made chocolate milk.

Now, when he didn’t bother to come off the high, he mostly just wanted to make the bruises darker. Z knew when to say no, though, and Ryan was spitting mad and _mean_ with it, even when something inside was trying to tell him to be better, but no was still no. He had told her to get out more than a few times for saying it. Later, Tennessee or Laena or Annie would call and tell him that asshole wasn’t a good look on him and he would say something far, far more unforgivable.

He would have suspected they had taken her half-way around the world to get her away from him if he’d been able to think that clearly, or even been paying that much attention.  
Jon called again, called until Ryan picked up the phone and said, “I’m thinking of staying here longer than I’d planned.”

Before he even realized he was saying it, Ryan was throwing back, “And that’s different than every other day of the week, how?”

Jon was silent for what felt like a really long time. Finally he asked, “How are you even affording the kind of supply you’ve got going?”

“How would you know what I’ve got going?” Ryan sneered. “Not like you’re around to notice.”

“We know a lot of the same people,” Jon said. Ryan could hear him gritting his teeth.

“Whatever,” Ryan said. “Stay there, stay wherever the fuck you want.”

“Get off the coke, Ryan,” Jon said softly.

“For what?” Ryan asked, and underneath the anger he could feel the bleeding, torn places inside that the anger bandaged, no matter how temporarily. “To sit around while you go play house? To try and be in a band that’s more yours than mine, despite the fact that you don’t seem to give a shit?”

Jon didn’t even hesitate before saying, “To remember that you made this decision, too.”

Not really, not exactly. Spencer had made it. And Ryan had trusted Spencer to be right. And that, more than anything, made Ryan want to hit something. The tiny, tiny part of his mind that was still rational was relieved that Jon had already walked out on him.

*

Ryan got catty with Z over something—he never even fucking knew what it was anymore—and she snapped, “There’s a difference between having a good time and being a fucking cokehead.”

He smiled, sharp and so mean even _he_ wanted to wince from it. “Guess you should’ve mentioned that before now, huh?”

She stilled, and Ryan waited for her to storm past, to leave. He would have; maybe not before, but now, now he definitely would have. Instead she blew out a harsh breath and said, “This isn’t-- first, this isn’t my fault. Nobody ever forced you to do anything.”

“Bullshit,” Ryan said.

“Stay on topic,” she said and looked him straight in the eye.

“How can you tell I’ve left it?”

“Because I know you, Ryan.” The admission or accusation or whatever it was sounded tired.

She had a point, albeit, not one Ryan was going to admit to. He just glared. She continued, “And maybe I should’ve thought about what I knew about you when it started getting more regular. We’re friends, sometimes we’re more than friends, sometimes something beside friends, but we’re definitely friends. And for that reason, I should’ve paid more attention. But you’re not my _kid_, Ryan, so stop acting like I fucking owed you anything more than that.”

“Go home, Z,” he sneered. “Go find someone who can play the way you want them to, all nice and neat.”

“You don’t even know what you’re saying anymore.”

“Maybe you just don’t know me as well you want to believe.”

“If Spencer were standing right here, he’d say the same damn thing.”

“Get out!” he screamed. She didn’t have the right to talk about Spencer, and she knew it. He wouldn’t have talked about Tennessee if she had gone off and left Z alone, not for anything.

She looked stubborn, but in the end she just said. “I’ll call and check up, but I can’t—“

“Get. The. Fuck. Out!” he screamed again, his breath coming heavy and mad.

She shook her head, but she left. She didn’t even slam the door behind her. Ryan wished she had. It would have made him feel better.

*

Jon broke up with Ryan by hiatus announcement via Twitter, which, as far as Ryan could tell, was a rung lower than texting on the break-up ladder of fuck-yous. Ryan probably would have gone and burnt everything Jon-related in his house in one big, totally illegal, backyard bonfire, except that he’d also gotten an email from Brendon.

Inside was a ridiculous, overachieving, sentimental cover of “The Kids From Yesterday,” and Ryan couldn’t stop listening to it. He hooked his computer up to his speakers and laid on the floor, letting the synthesized beats that Brendon had used pound into his shoulder blades. He fell asleep to it at one point, and woke up to it at another.

Brendon didn’t even particularly care for My Chem anymore, was the stupidest part. It was like Brendon had done this just for Ryan, but that wasn’t the way things worked. For one thing, Ryan wasn’t fucking seventeen anymore, so if Brendon was doing something for him, he was doing it for a version of Ryan that didn’t even exist anymore. The fact that he actually _liked_ “Kids” was beside the point. Beside the point and annoying as shit, because Brendon knew Ryan had never gotten into “Black Parade” and probably wouldn’t have been all over “Danger Days,” either. Which meant Brendon just still knew how to call Ryan’s taste when it came right down to it, which kind of made Ryan want to throw breakable crap against his wall. Only, the last time he’d done that he hadn’t gotten all the pieces cleaned up and cut his foot later and it had sucked.

The other thing that was discomfiting about the damn cover was that regardless of its irritation factor, Ryan knew it really was just for him. And people didn’t do things for Ryan, because Ryan was an asshole who couldn’t appreciate or reciprocate. Quid pro quo.

Ryan sat up then and stared at his couch for several long minutes. The couch didn’t say anything. Ryan was clearly going to have to speak for both of them. “I can cover songs.”

His couch clearly thought he was a dumbass. That was fine. Ryan generally agreed with the sentiment.

He hunted around his house. He was entirely sure he had a guitar. In fact, last he’d checked, he’d had a few, in different colors. Eventually he found one—hanging by its strap in his closet, which, okay then.

He knew without even having to think what song he was going to send. The first time Brendon had ever tried to get Ryan to expand his thinking on different types of music it had been with his secret vinyl collection, the one he hid so carefully. Brendon’s parents had played a lot of Johnny Cash’s hymns in the house, which meant, of course, that Brendon had gone seeking his other stuff—and been gleefully horrified and more than a little titillated by what he’d found.

Ryan remembered sitting on the floor of his house, out in the living room, using his dad’s vinyl player while it was just the two of them. The strains of the album, a story complete, filling the house. Ryan knew it was all about Johnny for Brendon, but for him “The Legend of Jesse James” had been about Emmylou Harris from the beginning.

Ryan could also remember that it had been Brendon belting out “Folsom Prison Blues” in the shower one morning when he’d thought everyone had left the house that had first set Brendon’s parents’ suspicions ablaze. Ryan sometimes thought that music had been as dangerous for the two of them as any other teenage dalliance might have been.

He set up his studio, enough to record just him and his guitar—he wasn’t Brendon, a one-man orchestra. He strummed, getting used to the feel of the strings under his fingers. Maybe it had been too long. He didn’t want to think about it.

Instead he closed his eyes and asked Brendon, “Don’t the steamships sail real slow?”

*

“Mona Lisa” was a rework of one of the cabin songs. It took Ryan a little bit to figure out why it sounded so familiar, but when he figured it out it was a bit like being punched in the chest.

Ryan walked around his house three times thinking about going somewhere, but in the end he just went with playing Oregon Trail and naming his character Brendon. Brendon died of dysentery, malaria, starvation, exposure and Indian attack. Spencer was right there by his side every time, which only made Ryan angrier.

He emailed Alex a rant about stupid people who couldn’t write their own music and Alex mostly responded back sympathetic sounds, which was Alex’s way of telling Ryan he was being a dick. Ryan _knew_ he was being a dick, thanks.

He went out to some club where he knew he could get what he wanted, and ended up going home with a girl he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember getting home in the morning, but felt bad enough to text Z and say he was sorry.

Z didn’t call back, which made sense, because he was pretty sure they weren’t talking. Also, he hadn’t contextualized the apology. The whole thing was stupid anyway, since sleeping with other people was part of their deal, part of what made them work, and when Ryan did it because he’d made a clear decision to, he never felt bad. This felt like something else, though, and Ryan suspected it wasn’t Z he wanted to apologize to, but the girl whose name he couldn’t remember, if he’d ever known it in the first place.

Alex called instead and said, “Ry. Can you maybe not call Z right now?”

“Didn’t,” Ryan told him.

“Don’t get technical with me.” Alex rarely sounded pissed, but Ryan was just aware enough to know that he did now.

“I didn’t have a fight with you,” Ryan said, feeling pretty unsure of what the hell was going on.

“You’re upsetting her.”

“Yeah, well, people in relationships have arguments.”

“Stop acting like the two of you had some tiff.”

“She said—“

“You told her to get out, Ryan.”

“People say things like that,” Ryan explained. Jesus, they were all adults, or at least, he had thought they were.

“You don’t even fucking know what you’re saying anymore, do you?”

“Alex—“

“Leave her alone.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll just leave you alone, too, while I’m at it,” Ryan said. He hung up the phone and considered turning it off. Instead, he took it out to his driveway and ran over it a few times. He didn’t feel any better afterward.

*

  


**Two Count**

  


*

The call came as they were about to board the plane for New York to film the Conan appearance. Brendon peered over because it was Spencer’s ring for an unknown number. Spencer answered, “Who is this?”

They’d learned to be anti-social to the unknowns over the years. Next Spencer asked, “Who’s asking?”

Then Spencer swallowed. “Shit, yeah. What —“ He paused. “Fuck. Okay, um. I’ll -- I have to make some calls, I’ll get someone there.” He turned and faced Brendon briefly, then looked away again. “No, I understand, but I can’t -- look, just give me twenty minutes, okay?”

He hung up and Brendon said, “Spence?”

“Ryan OD’d.” Spencer sounded like he didn’t believe what he was saying. The tone was a cross between flat and infuriated.

Brendon blinked. “Ryan —“

“I think, uh, I don’t know. They -- asshole never changed his next of kin.”

Brendon felt like that time he’d been walking on a treadmill and one of his brothers had unplugged it. “Spence —“

“I thought I’d call mom, but I don’t know if she can come out and if they’d even tell her the stuff she needs to know.”

“He’s-- did they tell you _anything_?”

“They think they caught it in time, but they won’t know until he wakes up.”

“Wakes up?” Brendon asked softly, unsure of how he could even form the words.

Spencer opened his mouth but nothing came out. Brendon could see the moment it all caught up with him. “Fuck. He’s in a coma. Bren—“

“I’m going to call Pete, now,” Brendon said. “He’ll have the right people call Conan’s people and reschedule.”

Spencer bit his lip. “Fuck. Fucking Ryan.”

“Yeah,” Brendon said. Then he hit memory four and waited for Pete to pick up.

*

When they got to the hospital, Spencer was able to get some more details. Evidently Ryan’s cleaning service had found him in his bedroom. Brendon couldn’t help but be relieved that Ryan had actually had the sense to get someone on top of cleaning his house after the vermin problem had started. The doctors were reasonably sure it had been caught in time, but there was no way to know until Ryan woke up.

Spencer went outside after talking with the doctors and Brendon followed him. For several long minutes, Spencer just stood there, looking lost. Then he said, “I’m going to kill him myself.”

Brendon didn’t say anything. Spencer didn’t really need him to, he knew. Spencer said, “I’m going to rip his brains out with my _fingers_.”

Brendon sympathized, he did. “I don’t think Ryan just forgot to change his next of kin.”

Spencer turned to Brendon. “He forgets to pay his _electricity_, Brendon—“

“And you pushed him out on his own, Spencer.” Brendon usually stayed quiet, but this time he was going to give as good as he got. It was strange, to feel like he knew something about Ryan that Spencer didn’t, but at the very least, he and Ryan had been communicating, if not always speaking. “He’s flakey, not life-impaired, and he doesn’t fucking know how to give up on anything.”

Spencer started to say something, then stopped. “I didn’t push him out.”

Brendon shifted his stance, acutely uncomfortable. “You kinda did. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate it. Because he was wilting and I was going to give, I was never going to let things continue the way they were and the only other option was to fold to him, but you could have told me to leave, and you didn’t.”

“You weren’t ready,” Spencer said, seeming utterly flabbergasted at the very idea. “I didn’t _choose_ you over him.”

Brendon winced. Spencer said, “Bren—“

“No, I -- I know. But if I were him, I would think you had. If I were him, it’d be worse, because I’d be Ryan, and I would have never known what it meant not to have you.”

Brendon could see the second that hit. He felt a little bad, because he knew that for all Ryan felt like he’d been pushed away, Spencer often hid his suspicions he’d been left behind. Spencer swallowed. “He didn’t even call on my birthday afterward. It was like—“

“When has Ryan ever let anyone know they had control over him? Ever let anyone suspect he needed them?”

Brendon knew the answer, but he waited for Spencer to whisper, “With me.”

Brendon nodded. “Like I said. Ryan didn’t fucking _forget_ to change his next of kin.”

Spencer looked at Brendon, his eyes tired and more than a little wary. “What the hell am I supposed to do here?”

Brendon hadn’t had time to formulate any kind of long term plan, but he had figured out the first step. “Be there when he wakes up.”

*

It took Ryan four days to wake up. Spencer would leave during visitation hours, when Brendon could sit in the room with Ryan. When Brendon wasn’t being a stand-in, he called all the people who had left frantic messages on Ryan’s phone: Alex, Z, the two Nicks, Andy, Ryan’s mom, and finally, Jon. Pete had routed calls from Gabe, Travis, Tom and Greta through to Brendon. They’d been lucky in the fact that Ryan’s lack of presence on the scene lately had kept the actual news sources quiet, but there were rumors and Tumblr posts and tweets all the same.

By the sixth call, which just happened to Gabe, Brendon was getting used to the concerned-but-not-shocked tone that everyone seemed to have in common. He asked, “Out of curiosity, did it occur to anyone to actually stage an intervention?”

Gabe came back with, “Like you and Spencer did?”

“Because you talk with your ex-bandmates so often.”

It took a second before Gabe spoke, sounding less confrontational. “More than you do at the moment, but I take your point.”

“I’m just asking, I swear. I’m just wondering how the hell everyone knew it was this bad, and nobody said, ‘dude, remember your dad?’”

“Truth?”

Unsure he wanted to hear it, Brendon said, “Yeah.”

“I think, in the back of our minds, we all figured if it got bad enough, you and Spence would. Or Jon. One of you three.”

Brendon swallowed down the urge to vomit. Gabe said, “I’m not—you’re not to blame.”

“Yeah.” Brendon waved a hand, even though he knew Gabe couldn’t see. “Listen, I’ve got like ten more people to call.”

“Tell him to call me when he wakes up, Urie.”

“You and everybody else.”

“I’m more important.”

Brendon made himself laugh, then hung up. The rest of the conversations were largely similar to one another, the same worried acceptance emanating from everyone except Ryan’s mom, who’d clearly been clueless. Brendon so, so deserved his own gallon of ice cream for dealing with the mountain of awkward that conversation turned into.

Alex and Z both came by the hospital in the first few days. Brendon hadn’t asked where they’d been. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. Murray came around pretty quickly and White sent a stuffed tiger. Andy sent a cactus. Brendon couldn’t decide if he found that clever or a total jerk move.

“Brendon?” Jon said when he picked up the phone, his tone sort of surprised.

“Ryan’s in the hospital, which you probably know. But just in case.” Brendon had decided before he called just to cut to the chase. He could crawl with the best of ‘em, as his reconciliation with his family had often proven to him, but he’d done what he could with Jon, and clearly that hadn’t been enough.

There were a few seconds of hesitation before Jon said, “Drugs?”

“His maid found him.”

“Fuck.”

Brendon’s jaw tightened, but he kept his mouth shut. Alex and Z, Brendon could forgive. They’d both looked exhausted when they’d visited, like they’d run as far as they could without collapsing. Brendon knew that feeling. Jon was a different matter. Jon should’ve fucking found a bike, or something.

Jon said, “Should I—“

“Jesus, do what you want,” Brendon said, and hung up.

Jon didn’t call back, but he did show up at the hospital a day later, Cassie with him. Brendon smiled at her. She smiled back.

Brendon was loathe to give up any of his visitor’s time to Jon, but for all Brendon knew, Ryan probably preferred Jon be at his side, so he did. When he came back to the hospital, Spencer was back in the room and Jon was in the waiting room.

Brendon, thinking ahead, had stolen one of Ryan’s books when he’d gone to pick up clothes and stuff, just in case Ryan decided to wake up and wanted something of his own. He got lost in words that were comforting to Ryan, mostly because it felt a little more like Ryan was speaking to him, instead of breathing shallowly through a tube.

He was reading a sentence over for a third time when Spencer came to the door and said, “He’s awake.”

It took Brendon a second to process the words. Then he was up and following Spencer down the hall, figuring Jon would either follow, or he wouldn’t. Ryan blinked at them when they appeared at the door.

Spencer was already back on the other side of the bed. Nobody was saying anything, so Brendon told Ryan, “This is totally unacceptable behavior.”

Ryan, who had already looked small and uncertain in the hospital bed, shrank in on himself even more. Spencer sighed and rubbed at his face. Brendon rolled his eyes and toed off his shoes before carefully climbing in next to Ryan. “It can’t continue at all,” he said, as he settled himself so that Ryan had most of the space, but they were still pressed up together.

Ryan said, “Accident.”

Spencer said, “I _really_ don’t fucking care.”

Ryan nodded, once. Spencer said, “Next time you need me to come, pick up the fucking phone, Ross.”

Ryan looked at Spencer then, and for a moment, Brendon was terrified that they’d lost their ability to know each other’s thoughts. Then Spencer said, “Yeah, okay. Well, we’re here. Go back to sleep.”

Ryan turned slightly so that he was even more tightly tucked against Brendon, and followed directions.

*

The first twenty-four hours after the detox fully started made Brendon reconsider whether Ryan really needed to get off the drugs and alcohol all that badly. It began fairly easily, with shakes and a fever and things that any flu would do to a guy.

Within the next few hours, someone had to be at his side full time in order to shift him whenever he needed to vomit—or, more often, dry heave. He screamed at the touch of anything, the blankets, their hands, sometimes even the breeze of the air-conditioning.

He was hoarse by six hours in, begging silently by eight. Brendon had no idea when he’d started crying except that at some point, Spencer drew him into a hug before wiping Brendon’s face and saying, “You can take a break, you know.”

Brendon really couldn’t, though. The idea of leaving Ryan to this was literally beyond him. He knew it was, in some ways, too little too late. That possibly, if he’d just paid more attention, been more willing to compromise, something, they might not all be here. But they were, and maybe this was Ryan’s fault, but he didn’t deserve it—nobody deserved this.

The absolute worst of it was the stretch from about twelve hours in to somewhere around seventeen. Spencer went to grab the two of them food at some point while Brendon was feeding ice slivers to Ryan. Ryan was crying, shaking uncontrollably and he managed to croak, “Bren?”

“Hey, Ry. You’ve got this.”

“Bren. Sing.”

Brendon blinked at the thready plea. It took his brain a moment to assemble the correct response and the first song that came to mind was a lullaby his mom had sung to him. It had been almost scandalous at the time because it involved drinking. Brendon fumbled through the first few words—it’d been years—but when he got to, “Bye, bye, baby, stop your yawing, sleep tight, baby, day will be dawning,” most of it came by instinct.

Ryan was still shaking, but he was also leaning into the hand Brendon had against his forehead, soothing back sweat-drenched hair. At some point, Spencer came back in the room, but Brendon just kept singing, segueing into “River of Dreams” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and whatever the hell else felt restful and he could remember right then and there.

Finally, finally, when Brendon was about to admit defeat, his throat more sore than it had ever been—even that time he’d performed with burgeoning strep—Brendon felt Ryan go limp. He shivered at least half as much in sleep as he had awake, but for the moment, he was resting.

Brendon slumped forward. Spencer came and rested both hands, warm and steady, on Brendon’s shoulders. He squeezed a little bit and Brendon let the sob building underneath all the lyrics break free.

*

The hospital kept Ryan on suicide watch for another two days after the worst of the withdrawal passed, since coke withdrawal tended to cause or heighten pre-existing depression. Also, Brendon suspected the hospital wasn’t completely sold on the idea that the OD had been an accident, and Brendon couldn’t really say that he blamed them.

Brendon and Spencer went back to their respective houses the night before Ryan was set to be released. The three of them had talked about what the plan was going forward, and had agreed they’d come and get Ryan in the morning and he’d either stay with one of them, or they would stay at his place. Ryan hadn’t been sure how he had felt about going home, so Spencer had decided they’d cross that bridge when they were getting on it.

Spencer went back to the hospital at nine the next morning and called Brendon at nine-thirty to ask, “Did Ryan say anything to you about having arranged a transfer to a thirty-day program?”

“News to me,” Brendon told him. Then he thought about it. “Good news.”

“Yeah,” Spencer said, sounding somewhat distracted.

“Spence?”

“He left a note with the desk staff, but it didn’t even tell me which one, just that he was going. And, uh, thanks, and he didn’t mean to be an inconvenience.”

“Ryan Ross, most understated drama queen ever to have lived.” Brendon couldn’t help it, he snorted.

“He was serious, I think.”

“Oh, I’m sure he was.”

“Bren—“

“Let him have his thirty days. He has to come back home afterward, right? I got Jon to loan me his extra key so I could copy it. What’s a month?”

“I’m going to sound like an idiot if I say it sounds like a long time, aren’t I?”

“Little bit,” Brendon agreed. “I mean, contextually.”

Spencer made a frustrated sound. “He said to apologize to you, too.”

Brendon would give a shit when Ryan was really ready to say it, but for the moment, it was something. “He say anything about Jon?”

“Mostly just to tell him to go home.”

Brendon was silent at that, the tangle of his thoughts not allowing him to say much of anything. Spencer filled in with, “You can tell me I fucked up.”

Brendon shook his head. “Sure, I could. But I’m not sure not being omniscient is the same as fucking up.”

“I’m really thinking it was more pride, than anything. That I _thought_ I knew best.”

“Maybe you did. I dunno, maybe there were a million ways this could have gone. He did write an album and go on two tours and all of that. It wasn’t as though there was a ton of evidence that this was the only way this could go.”

“I knew he was using.”

Brendon closed his eyes. He had known too, even if he’d never said it aloud, or even thought it very loudly. Fuck, _everyone_ had known. But it had been like those days in his house, when they’d all thought that if nobody said anything, Brendon’s Problem With Rock ‘n Roll would go away. “You’re his friend, Spence. But you’re only his friend. You can’t be more than that.”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Spencer told him. “It isn’t.”

Brendon understood, he did, but for right now, “You have to make it that simple. Or we’re just going to do this all over again. I don’t want to, and I don’t think he can.”

Spencer took a sharp breath in. “Yeah.”

“You’ve got thirty days. If he can do it, so can you.”

“You sound like a dumbass.”

“Better than sounding like the world’s smallest and out of tune violin,” Brendon shot back.

“How long have you been saving that one?”

“A while,” Brendon told him. “Very long while.”

For the first time since the hospital had called him, Spencer laughed. “The nurse at the desk, the one who gave me his note, she, uh, she gave me some Al-Anon info. I was thinking about starting while he’s away. Getting help.”

“Up for some company?”

“You’re coming whether you want to or not.”

“I love how consensual and loving our relationship is,” Brendon informed him. Spencer hung up.

*

Brendon and Spencer not-so-stealthily infiltrated Ryan’s house. Brendon texted Z and asked, “You got a few hours?”

“tomorrow” she sent back. “i’ll bring bagels”

True to her word, she showed, and with cinnamon swirl, no less. Brendon clapped his hands. Z glanced over and said, “Yeah, Ry mentioned those being your favorites, once.”

Brendon almost dropped the bag of bagels. “Um—before? That must have been before.”

Z cracked open the jar of jam she’d brought and set it next to the block of cream cheese. “No, just a couple of months ago.”

Brendon said, “Oh.”

Z pinned Brendon with a look. “It’s not as though you forgot his favorite kind of bagel.”

“True,” Brendon agreed. “Just-- it would have hurt to say it. Even to Spencer.”

“It hurt him too.”

She didn’t say anything else and Brendon knew that if an apology was owed, it wasn’t to her. He changed subjects. “I need your help going through his stuff.”

“I figured.”

“I’m not -- I don’t want to pry. But I don’t want there to be anything he can’t resist when he gets back, either.”

“Why me?” Z tilted her head, looking up from the cutting board. “Why not Alex?”

“No reason,” Brendon lied.

“Mm,” Z said, and didn’t look away. “No reason except maybe it’s easier to get to know me now, get used to me, before he comes back?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Bullshit,” Z said softly.

Brendon set the knife he’d picked up aside and let himself breathe for a few moments. Then he said, “He’s never been mine, Z. He’ll never be mine. I didn’t have a problem with Keltie except for when I did and even then, it wasn’t about him, it was about me wanting her to be in love with _him_ and not someone slightly more Byronic, infinitely more put together and three hundred times more focused on her idealization of him. I’m sometimes mean-spirited and even cruel but I’m not …_small_. I’m not here to poach, I’m just here to—“

“Find how you fit?”

Brendon shrugged. “As good a description as any, I guess.”

Z gave him the knife back. “I don’t think anything is the way you think it is.”

“What does that mean?”

She shook her head. For a second something flashed in her eyes and Brendon wondered, without understanding why, if she’d heard _Vices_. Then she went back to cutting her bagel. “It’s one of those things you have to figure out for yourself.”

“I kind of hate you.”

“Mm.”

*

By the time Ryan came home, Brendon had cleaned every last nook and cranny of his house checking for contraband and unwanted visitors. He’d done six loads of laundry to cover all of Ryan’s clothes, sheets and towels. He’d had Spencer prepare a week’s worth of healthy meals and freeze all of them. He’d reorganized Ryan’s DVD and album collections by genre and title, and, last but not least, bought Ryan a new blanket. That last was mostly because Brendon figured if he was returning home from rehab, he’d want something new and cuddly. Also, the blanket had the Millennium Falcon on it, and Ryan not so secretly loved Star Wars.

Though for all that Brendon was the one prepping for Ryan’s return, he’d told Spencer in no uncertain terms, “You should go get him.”

Spencer—in the middle of making milk-chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookies which were a bitch to make and therefore, predictably, Ryan’s favorites—asked, “Why?”

Brendon rolled his eyes but played along. “Because you’re his next of kin.”

“Only because he pissed everyone else off.”

Brendon felt his jaw tighten and he made himself breathe out. “If that’s really what you think, why are you even here?”

“Honestly? I’m pretty sure it’s Stockholm Syndrome, or something related.”

“Bullshit,” Brendon said, his voice low and fierce.

“Just because you can’t stop being in love with—“

“Stop it, Spencer.”

Spencer did stop then, taking a step away from the counter and evidently giving himself some space to breathe. “You know, I would have known you had seen him even without you tweeting pictures like a lovestruck third-grader.”

“It wasn’t meant to be some kind of a secret. And seriously? _Now_ is when you’re going to get pissed about this? I mean, I knew you didn’t want to talk about it at the time, but that wasn’t some kind of permission from me to save it all up until some later date.”

“I don’t care about your epic pining whatever-the-fuck, except that I think you’d be happier if you got the fuck over it. What I care about is that he let you take the damn pictures so that it’d be crystal fucking clear I wasn’t invited.”

Brendon blinked. Then he blinked again. “Are you fucking mental?”

Spencer whipped around at that, clearly having a retort ready, but whatever Brendon’s expression looked like, it was enough to stop him in his tracks. “I-- No?”

“You weren’t invited because I was shopping for a present for my niece in the mall when I stopped for wings. There wasn’t some grand master plan, I just didn’t want to torment you with an afternoon of The Disney Store. You were invited in the larger universe sense of invited. Hell, you _came_ to dinner that one time. I mean -- fuck, Spence, I think he only agreed to that second dinner on the prayer that you might be there. When has anything about Ryan _ever_ really been about me?”

Spencer laughed. At first it was just a small, choked thing, but before Brendon could figure out what had happened, it was the kind of laughter where Spencer was clenching his knees together, holding his ribs. When he could breathe, he said, “You’re an idiot.”

“O-kay.” Brendon could grant him that, but as far as he could tell, it didn’t have anything to do with what they were talking about.

Spencer ran a hand over his face. “You think I should go pick him up?”

“I think he looked over my damn shoulder to see if you were behind me every few seconds, like he couldn’t help himself. I think Ryan could fucking marry someone and you’d still be listed as his next of kin. And I think you should get over being mad at him for being mad at you, and being upset with yourself for maybe being wrong about him, if you were, and whatever the hell else it is you’ve got going on up there. Yeah, I think you should go pick him the fuck up. Maybe talk on the way back.”

“Tall order,” Spencer murmured.

“You’re a tall dude.”

*

Brendon had told himself he wasn’t going to wait at Ryan’s house for Spencer and Ryan to get back, but predictably, he found himself there anyway. He brought over three large pizzas, which was undoubtedly overkill, but Ryan would need food and it was better than under-ordering.

It took four hours for them to get back, which Brendon figured meant they had stopped somewhere. He’d thought about calling, but if progress was being made, well, Brendon didn’t like being a guy who stood in the way. Instead he paced around and tweeted stupid shit and generally made a nuisance of himself within the confines of Ryan’s house.

When they showed up, Ryan and Spencer both had sand all over them. Ryan had the beginnings of a sunburn. He was gaunt, and looked exhausted, but he also looked like Ryan, rather than a guy with something crawling just beneath his skin. Brendon said, “Uh. I thought you might need food.”

Ryan looked at the pizza boxes as though they were sacred. Brendon wondered uneasily what the hell rehab programs fed people. Then Ryan scratched at his ear and came away with a palmful of sand. “I think, uh, shower first.”

“Yeah, right,” Brendon said, and stepped out of the way.

“There’s a guest shower—“

“I know, Ry,” Spencer said, and made a shooing motion. Ryan ambled off, presumably in the pursuit of cleanliness.

Brendon mouthed, “So?”

Spencer rolled his eyes and said softly. “He needed some air.”

Brendon whispered, “You wanted to get him dirty.”

Spencer grinned. “He needed that, too.”

“Did you even talk?”

“Every time we started he just kept apologizing. I just -- I decided we could spend the morning without words.”

But then, Ryan and Spencer had never needed words, not really. Brendon said, “Yeah, okay. Go shower. I’ll reheat the pizzas.”

“You’re a god among men, Brendon Urie.”

“Wash behind your ears.”

*

Ryan came back before Spencer, scrubbed clean, barefoot and smelling of aloe. He said, “Um, so, I made a list. Like, a written one. It started rhyming, so I threw it out, but then I got it back, because I thought I might forget all the stuff that was on it and I didn’t want to forget to say sorry for anything.”

“Okay,” Brendon nodded. “Okay. Can we put the apology limericks off until we’ve eaten and you’ve slept and there’s been hugging and maybe, I don’t even fucking know, sing-alongs?”

“Is that a metaphor for forever?” Ryan asked.

As desperately as Brendon wanted to say yes, he shook his head. “Just, give yourself some time.”

“We went to the beach,” Ryan said, as if that were an answer.

Brendon said, “Yeah. That’s -- I’m glad. But I wasn’t there.”

“I know.” Then, “We should have—“

“No. You needed, I mean, both of you needed to, um,” _talk_ wasn’t exactly the right word.

“Be,” Ryan said.

“Be,” Brendon agreed.

“I want to tell you I didn’t mean it. Didn’t mean to do this.”

Brendon frowned.

Ryan continued, “But I think maybe I did. I think maybe I would have done anything.”

It took Brendon a second to fill in the silent, _to get you here_. He waited for a minute to feel pissed, because seriously. Only, this was Ryan, and Ryan was a lot of things, but half-hearted in his needs wasn’t one of them. Stupid about knowing how to ask? Yes. Managing to get himself the right end result? Not so much. “When you-- when you sent me the Johnny Cash song, Ry?”

“I was trying,” Ryan said. “I was.”

“All it would have taken was a word. A ‘hi’ or a ‘come’ or a ‘please’. I would have known. And if I hadn’t, I would’ve asked Spence, and he would’ve.”

“I didn’t think about it. I don’t know that I thought.”

“You were pretty wasted. I could hear. It was . . . the track was too fast, even though it was clear you couldn’t tell.”

There was a tense but not precisely awkward silence between them. Ryan finally said, “I could do it again. Clean.”

“Do you want to?” Brendon asked.

“I don’t know,” Ryan told him. “I feel like I don’t know anything.”

Brendon pressed his lips together and rocked back on his feet. He said, “Good thing I decided what was for lunch.”

Ryan smiled, a little, more a facial movement than an actual smile, but Brendon _knew_ Ryan, was the thing. “Yeah,” Ryan said. “Yeah, it smells good.”

*

After lunch, Ryan helped stick the dishes in the dishwasher before passing out on his couch. Spencer left to go check up on his and Brendon’s dogs and take care of some errands that were actually his, as opposed to Ryan’s.

Brendon left Ryan’s cellphone on the floor next to the couch and scribbled the note: “Call Z. Had to run out. Be back soon.”

Then he Googled the nearest nursery he could think of and headed there, only to spend the better part of half an hour staring in amazed bewilderment at the assortment of plants. Eventually, a girl with tortoiseshell glasses and leaves in her hair asked, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, please, please help me,” Brendon said. Realizing he might scare her away he smiled sheepishly. “Plants are not my thing.”

She tilted her head. “But you wanna try?”

“Uh, it’s more—“ Brendon paused as it occurred to him that saying it was a twelve steps thing might give the wrong impression, and switched tactics. “Are there any plants that could be accidentally locked in a closet, or something, for a few months and still survive?”

She laughed. “Sadly, plants of the potted variety still need their human counterparts to help them out on occasion.”

“Yeah, okay, we’re screwed,” Brendon sighed.

She said, “Maybe not entirely. C’mon, I’ll show you a few things that generally do better when people forget about them for a while. Put them in a place in your house where you’ll trip over it every few weeks, and we’re in business.”

“Yeah?” Brendon asked, almost afraid to hope.

“Sure. One of ’em even has a braided trunk.”

“And it’s a real plant? Not plastic?”

She laughed again, “I swear on my authority as a minimum-wage paid drone of a corporate nursery chain.”

“That’s some authority there.”

“Lemme tell you.” She grinned at him and led him off toward a part of the store he hadn’t even noticed and introduced him to the type of plant that would probably work best.

He said, “It looks tiny. Is it supposed to look tiny?”

“Much like humans, if you feed them, they grow.”

“Wait, we have to feed it?”

“Well, water,” she said calmly, and picked it up for him, walking him to the front of the store. She even walked him through the self-payment lane and accompanied him to his car. Brendon sort of suspected she had recognized him, but she hadn’t said anything, which he appreciated. She said, “You’ve got this. You’ll be back in no time for a bigger pot.”

“You’re an optimist,” he accused.

“Guilty as charged,” she said, and went back in the store.

He belted the plant into the passenger seat and said, “Well, Pippi. Let’s go see what Ryan thinks, shall we?”

*

When Brendon walked into the house, Ryan was sitting up on the couch, staring at his phone. He looked up and said, “I don’t think Z wants to hear from me.” And then, “Is that a plant?”

“No, it’s a toucan,” Brendon told him. “And she really does.”

“I feel like I might have a better grasp on what my probably-ex is thinking -- why do you have a plant?”

“Pippi is my gift to you. An experiment, as it were. And Z helped me clean all the contraband out of your house. We spoke, sometimes at length. Grow a pair and fucking call her.”

“Pippi? What the—“

“You know.” Brendon pointed at the braided trunk. “Like Pippi Longstocking. She had those braided pigtails.”

“I—“ Ryan blinked. “Okay, that’s pretty clever, but even so, are you getting me a plant to put me back on the road to having a relationship with Z? I’m not even-- the center I went to does a different step program, you realize?”

“I’m pretty willing to bet it involves taking care of shit before diving back into relationships and no, this isn’t about Z, it’s about you. Except that you should call her, because she deserves a call from you.”

“I could hardly take care of a dog _before_ I became an addict, what makes you think—“

“You gave Hobo up because you knew that was better for her, which, as good parenting goes, is a pretty fucking big thing.”

“I’m going to kill your Pippi.”

“Well, sure, with that attitude.”

“Brendon—“

“Call Z, Ryan. Tell her you’re sorry for whatever the hell you did that hurt her feelings. Tell her whatever the hell you need to tell her, but fucking call her.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Find a place where you won’t forget you have a plant.”

“You don’t always know better than me,” Ryan said, sounding more annoyed than upset or frustrated.

“Of course not,” Brendon said, and wandered off in search of the perfect perch.

*

Brendon brought his dogs over the next morning. He arrived before ten, but Spencer was already there. He was watching something quietly on the TV. Ryan was lying on the couch wrapped in the Star Wars blanket, asleep with his head in Spencer’s lap. Spencer’s fingers were carding softly through his hair.

Brendon asked softly, “You stay the night?”

Spencer nodded. “He uh, well, didn’t _ask_, but—“

“Yeah.”

“I wasn’t feeling good about leaving, even before.”

Ryan had spent the better part of two hours in his room, on the phone with Z the day before. Brendon hadn’t a fucking clue what they’d said to each other, but it had left Ryan listless and sad in a bone-deep way Brendon could feel though his skin. He couldn’t even imagine how it felt for Spencer. “Did he sleep?”

“Once I got in the bed.”

When Brendon had been younger, he’d hated Spencer for that, just being able to climb in next to Ryan any time and be welcome. But that had been before he’d figured out what it meant to have someone just lie close to you and not want anything more. Jon had helped with that, actually. It hurt to think about, so for the most part, Brendon didn’t. “Has Jon called?”

“Last night, after you left. Ryan didn’t want to talk, but I said he could come by today or tomorrow.”

“He say anything about the band?”

Spencer shook his head. “But I didn’t ask.”

“I don’t want the band if it’s the professional equivalent of a pity fuck,” Ryan mumbled. He hadn’t moved.

“When’d you wake up?” Brendon asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Ryan retorted.

Brendon rolled his eyes. His gaze wandered to where Spencer was rubbing the back of Ryan’s neck. Ryan made a contented noise before saying, “Can you, a little to the left?”

Spencer must have found the spot, because Ryan whimpered then settled. The dogs, attracted by the sounds, came over and immediately commenced licking Ryan’s face.

Ryan fell off the couch in his attempt to get away. Both Brendon and Spencer laughed. Ryan pouted at them. “Those are your dogs, right? Brendon didn’t get me dogs while I was sleeping, too?”

“You didn’t want dogs?” Spencer asked, with just the right amount of oh-shit in his voice.

Ryan made an “oh, sure” face at Spencer and said, “You should know that I ate all the orange sorbet you bought for yourself.”

“Them’s fightin’ words, boy.”

“You think you can handle this?” Ryan asked, managing even more monotone than he normally had.

Spencer managed not to crack up for about thirty seconds—which was twenty-nine longer than Brendon.

*

The night before Brendon and Spencer had to leave for the UK, the three of them squeezed themselves into Ryan’s bed and slept there. In the morning, Brendon whispered, “We can still cancel.”

Pete would probably kill them, but they could. Spencer didn’t argue, so Brendon knew he was right to offer one more time. Ryan shook his head. “Jon and I need to actually figure stuff out, Z and Alex both promised to check in. I’ll be fine.”

Brendon didn’t mention the fact that Ryan was wearing Brendon’s hoodie and Spencer’s pajama pants in bed. Instead, he let Ryan fall back asleep and added onto the note that Spencer left with all the pertinent information, “We’re a fucking phone call away, Ross. No more dramatics.”

He softened the sentiment with a badly drawn dog. Ryan would get the message.

Brendon knocked himself out for the flight. When he woke up, they were hitting the ground. Spencer already had his phone out, his finger over the power button. As soon as the announcer gave permission, Spencer was calling Ryan.

Brendon half-listened in, half-slept while Spencer confirmed that Ryan was all right. Spencer handed the phone to Brendon, who yawned at Ryan in greeting. Ryan said, “Glad to know you find me scintillating.”

“See if I bring you back anything,” Brendon told him.

“Everything I want from there is perishable,” Ryan complained.

“Your life: so hard,” Brendon agreed.

Ryan snorted. “Give the kids their money’s worth.”

“I do that just by showing up, Ross.”

Ryan snorted again and hung up this time. Brendon handed the phone back to Spencer. Spencer got on and checked his messages. Out of the corner of his eye, Brendon noticed Spencer looking slightly flummoxed. Brendon asked, “Everything okay?”

“Greta called.”

“Is that weird?” As of the point when Ryan had checked out of the hospital, Spencer and Greta had been friendly. She’d come around a couple of times during Ryan’s stay, although she’d had the grace to let him go through the worst of the detox without having people he probably didn’t want seeing that be there. She’d even gone to one or two of the Al-Anon meetings with them while Ryan was locked away at the program.

Spencer shrugged. “Kind of? We don’t talk all that often, and it’s mostly when we see each other, you know?”

“She say what she wanted?”

“She said she was gonna be back in LA next week and asked if I thought Ryan’d mind her dropping in.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t want to screw up any recovery stuff that might be going on?”

“Maybe.” Spencer put his phone back up to his ear and Brendon could hear the faint ringing and then someone saying hello on the other end. “Hi, Greta?”

Whatever she said in response actually coaxed a smile out of Spencer. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry, I meant to call when he got home--“ Spencer paused. “Oh, he did? Good, you clearly rate.”

She said something. He nodded. “Listen, I’m sure Ry’d love a visit. I’ll call him and tell him you’re gonna call, because he’s gotten kind of unpredictable about picking up his phone since the worst of the Twitter explosion. Sometimes he doesn’t even bother to check the number. He’s got a ring for me.”

Ryan also now had a ring for every news outlet that had tried to call him since Rolling Stones had posted the story on their website: Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You.” But he had to realize they were news outlets before he could change the ring to warn himself. Meanwhile, despite it not being his job anymore, Pete had Decaydance run some media interference for Ryan.

There was a long period where Spencer was listening to whatever she was saying and then he said, “Oh, uh, really? I mean, yeah, that would -- I’d like that.”

_Curioser and curioser,_ Brendon mused, moving to get their stuff from the overhead bin. By the time he was finished, Spencer had hung up. Brendon raised an eyebrow at him. Spencer said, “It’s been a while, and I’m kind of out of practice at recognizing this shit, but I think I just got asked on a date by a _really_ hot musician chick.”

Brendon held up his hand for a high-five. When Spencer complied, Brendon told him, “Strong work, my friend, mighty strong.”

*

Before the second show, Brendon locked himself in the back lounge of the bus with the Casio and sent a recording to Ryan that started with, “Uh, this is not the grand sound I was imagining when I first planned on sending you this song,” and ended with Vanessa Carlton’s “Ordinary Day.” He attached it to an email that just said, “This would be more fun with you here.”

Before he went to bed that night, he received a reply with Ryan playing the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” Only Ryan could sound ironic while covering the Beach Boys. Brendon mulled that one over and even played it for Spencer without any context.

Spencer asked, “You still sending him songs?”

Brendon blinked because he’d never mentioned the songs to Spencer. Spencer shrugged. “I caught you recording covers twice without ever releasing them. I put two and two together.”

“That is not two and two,” Brendon said.

“Evidently it my world, it is.”

That was hard to argue. “Okay. Then, yes, I’m still sending him songs.”

“Normally I would say that’s Ryan-ese for ‘will you marry me?’ but given everything, I think he just wants you to come home, water his plant, and snuggle with him. Possibly with tongue.”

“There’s not -- what?”

“I don’t get paid enough to be your drummer _and_ your personal therapist,” Spencer said.

“True,” Brendon said. “But do you really want to leave me to my own devices?”

Spencer swore. “Bren, what happened between the two of you?”

For a second, Brendon was actually speechless. “You don’t know?”

Spencer shook his head. “Ryan didn’t tell and I didn’t have the heart to ask. It was kind of -- I always thought he’d get to a point where he wouldn’t mind having the conversation, but he never did.”

“Oh,” Brendon said. “Um. Huh.”

“Then there was Jac—“ Spencer prompted, arching his eyebrows.

“I kinda pushed the Jac thing.”

Spencer tilted his head. “Well, that explains why my warnings went unheeded.”

“He -- it started getting real, in my head. And that would mean I was gay. And this was Ryan, and I couldn’t imagine that I was anything more for him than a stopover, so I thought, if I stopped it then and found him something shiny and got something shiny of my own I could prove my heterosexuality and not spend my life in love with Ryan Ross, all in one fell swoop.”

“Wow,” Spencer said after a minute.

“Yeah, those weren’t my smartest years.”

“You broke my best friend’s heart and pushed him into the arms of a girl who liked his guitar more than him.”

“You can beat me up, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t have, back then.”

Brendon didn’t. He kind of wondered if Ryan had been protecting him by not saying anything. Fuck. “I have never wanted to water a plant so much in my entire life.”

Spencer snorted and rubbed at his face. “I am full of completely conflicting feelings at this moment.”

“Sounds about right.”

“You’d better feed that fucker, too. With like, verdant soil, or whatever the hell it is plants get hungry for.”

“We’re gonna keep that thing alive,” Brendon said, not entirely sure what they were talking about anymore. On the upside, he was pretty sure Spencer didn’t have any idea, either.

*

Ryan sent Brendon a clip from YouTube with Brendon just about falling off the stage in Manchester, like Brendon might not have noticed while he was, oh, struggling not to faceplant in the audience. Brendon found a picture of Ryan’s camwhore days and sent it right back. Ryan’s only response was, “Touché.”

Brendon wrote Z, mostly because he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He meant to actually say something, but in the end all he managed was, “How are you?”

She came back with, “He’s fine. Unproductive, but fine.”

Brendon’s stomach twisted and he responded, “No, I meant it. About you.”

“And I left him to overdose. I don’t even know what there is to talk about between me and you.”

Brendon thought that over for a while before emailing Ryan. “Did Z leave you?”

Ryan took the better part of twenty-four hours to come up with the scintillating, “I yelled at her to get out.”

Brendon gently banged his head against the wall a few times before trying again. “I mean do you think she _left_?”

Ryan was even longer in his dilly-dallying this time. When he wrote back though, it was a real answer. “I think sometimes you can really love someone and still not know when to listen to them and when not to.”

Brendon was afraid to poke at that, certain that Z wasn’t the only relationship they were discussing anymore. He told Ryan, “Even if it can’t be fixed, or if one of you doesn’t want to fix it, or whatever, you should tell her what you did wasn’t on her.”

Ryan’s email came quickly on that, and was two words: “It wasn’t.”

Two days later, an email showed up from Z entitled, “You’re a Nosy Fucker.”

Brendon made a face at the screen. Inside, the body of the email said, “If you needed us to be okay so you could make your move, you’re free to move about the cabin.”

Brendon entitled his email, “And You’re Presumptuous.” He said, “Believe it or not, I figured you guys actually deserved a chance, if there was one.”

Her next email sounded tired. “We never made each other any promises, Bren. It wasn’t like that with us. It was just…easy. Something like. And neither of us was ever going to settle for that. Not really.”

Brendon had known easy for a while, with Sarah, so he knew that Z was telling the truth. It didn’t make him feel a lot better about the whole thing. He said, “Thanks,” without being able to tell her exactly what it was for.

She must have known, because she said, “Yeah, yeah. *rolls eyes* Go have your fated, semi-disastrous, more-epic love affair.”

“Talk later,” Brendon tried.

Her last email was entitled, “You’re Incorrigible,” and didn’t have a body.

*

Brendon’s phone rang at three in the morning and Brendon almost shut it off before seeing that it was Ryan. He picked up and Ryan said, “I tried Spence, but I think he turned his phone off.”

Brendon yawned. “He got mauled by a fan before Zack could get in between. He needed to pass out.”

“Suck,” Ryan said.

“Ryan, um—“

“Jon and I talked.”

That woke Brendon up. “Is he there?”

“No, he -- I tried just eating and going to sleep after he left, but I couldn’t. And then, I just, I wanted to go to a club, right? But, then I thought of like, seeing your and Spencer’s faces, and that was almost enough to keep me home. Not quite, though. I needed to, y’know, hear a voice, or something. Something tangible or whatever.”

“It’s good that you called.” Brendon took a breath, then another. Ryan was on the phone with him, safe for now.

“Andy’s gonna stay in Chicago.” Ryan was crying. It was a quiet sound, more uneven breathing than anything, but it was familiar to Brendon. “I thought, maybe if I went out there, but I don’t know if I could get the Nicks in on that and, I just, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“You can replace two people, if that’s what you really want.”

“No,” Ryan said, anger bleeding through his tone. “No, as it turns out, I fucking can’t.”

“Ry,” Brendon said. “Hey.”

“I don’t want another new band. I don’t want – no, I fucking _can’t_ start over again, not when it always, when I always follow the wrong person or choose the wrong genre or, just, get it wrong. I just get it wrong.”

Brendon could hear the sound of glass breaking, which was startling, to say the least. “Ryan!”

“I want my songs and my friends to stop leaving me alone. I want this dead fucking silence inside me to go away, to stop being so fucking _there_ all the time, stop being the only thing in my head I know anymore, stop making me want to find ways to push it away, drown--“

“Ryan!” Brendon yelled again, this time with a sharp edge to his voice.

Ryan quieted, his breath loud and ragged between them. Brendon asked, “What are you breaking?”

“Dishes,” Ryan admitted, sounding petulant.

“Did you cut yourself?”

There was a long moment of silence before Ryan said, “Little bit.”

Brendon closed his eyes. “You need to clean that up. And the dishes.”

“Brendon—“

“We can’t go back, Ry. None of us. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Yeah, well, you got to keep you and Spence, so fucking easy for you to say.”

“Fuck you, Ryan. For the first six months, Spencer let me believe you had just up and decided to go because he thought it would hurt less than knowing I maybe could have changed it if I’d just destroyed every part of me that mattered by giving in to you. And the stupidest part is, he was probably fucking _right._”

When Brendon was pretty sure Ryan wasn’t going to respond to that, Ryan asked, “Did it? Hurt less?”

“Did _anything_ other than the fucking coke make you feel good?” Brendon all-but snarled.

“Not even the coke really worked that well,” Ryan told him softly.

Brendon rubbed a hand over his face. He felt tired down to his blood vessels. “You don’t have to make any decisions about the band right now. Not today and not tomorrow, not even before we get back.”

“Oh, you mean I should figure my life out in the four or so days before you leave again?”

Brendon had fewer barriers when he was exhausted, which was saying something. He spilled out, “You know what else you don’t have to decide right now?”

“What?”

“Whether you’re gonna come with us on the next leg or not.”

“Brendon—“

“Think about it. And don’t stop emailing me. I have to go now because it’s ass o’clock here and I have a show tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said.

Brendon softened that by adding, “I’ll keep my phone on.”

“No, you should sleep.”

“Mm,” Brendon said, but he kept his phone on anyway.

*

Brendon said to Spencer, “Uh, there’s a cover I want to do. Like, for a show. Or maybe a few, depending on how it goes over.”

Spencer looked up from his email. “You’ve talked it over with Dallon and Ian?”

“Yeah, Dallon and Ian aren’t going to read anything into it other than me having a sudden craving for eighties New Wave sound.”

Spencer looked torn between complete bitchface and breaking into laughter. “What, the email serenades weren’t enough?”

“I’m a grand gestures kind of guy.” Brendon said, though he felt that was self-evident.

Spencer held his hand out. “That the music?”

Brendon handed it over. Spencer glanced at it and burst out laughing. Brendon glared, “Thanks for nothing, asshole.”

Spencer grinned at him. “Very grand. Have you run this by legal?”

“Wanted to know if you guys would even do it, first.”

“And didn’t want a mention of it to get back to Pete, if it wasn’t worth it,” Spencer said, calling Brendon’s dodge.

Brendon made a face. “His mockery is more mockey than yours.”

“Only because he’s more socially inept.”

Totally true, but still, Brendon was only risking it for good reason. “I’ll put in a call.”

Spencer waved the paper. “I’ll go work this out.”

Brendon put in a call to his favorite person in legal, who was used to dealing with their weird cover requests anyway, and had the licensing cleared within thirty-six hours. Pete called within six to say, “The eighties called, they want their soul back.”

“Blow me,” Brendon said. He’d had a while to come up with more clever comebacks, but he could never remember them when the time came.

“I don’t think it’s me you want,” Pete said.

Unsure of whether to ask or not, Brendon nonetheless took the plunge. “How’s—“

“Nobody’s gonna be serenading anyone else in the Wentz household for a while, so let’s just live vicariously through your Behind The Music romance situation.”

“I’m not sure we’ve technically progressed that far. He hasn’t even agreed to come on the next leg.”

“Has Spence asked?”

“I’m leaving that to him.” Brendon wasn’t going to ask Spencer to do it. That would only end in disaster for everyone. “But if that’s what it takes—“

“Don’t act like this is all simple, Urie.”

Pete had a point, which was essentially Brendon’s least favorite thing to admit, beaten only by having to admit that _Ryan_ had a point. Brendon said, “I’m gonna go work on this cover, so that I, like, do right by the label.”

“Coward,” Pete accused.

“Yup,” Brendon agreed, and cut the call.

*

Two nights later, Brendon said to the crowd, “When In Rome was probably a little before your time. They were before mine, in any case.”

A few yells came from fuck only knew where in the crowd. Brendon grinned. “Yeah, okay, someone knows what I’m talking about. Anyway, this is a great little song.”

He went to the Casio but before he started, he turned to the crowd and asked, “You guys will make sure this ends up on YouTube, right?”

He waited until the screams died down to sing, “If you need a friend/don’t look to a stranger/you know in the end/I’ll always be there.”

*

By the end of the show, Brendon had a text message waiting for him. It said, “the right words to say was always my job.”

Brendon texted back, “at least until you left.”

It was a nerve-wracking four hours before Ryan called, sounding half-asleep and more pissed off and said, “I didn’t _leave_. Or, at least, we both fucking walked out on each other.”

That was true enough. “But I can -- I can find the words on my own. I just don’t _want_ to. Or, at least, I want you to be the one listening.”

“Jesus,” Ryan said, and hung up.

Brendon curled up in his bunk and pretended to sleep. Thirty minutes later, he was still pretending, when Spencer’s phone rang. Brendon stumbled into the lounge and cuddled up next to Spencer, knowing Spencer would assume Brendon was mostly asleep and not listening. It was, at best, a devious tactic, but Brendon was done playing nice.

There was murmuring on the other side of the line and then Spencer said, “She asked if you’d like to see her. I said probably. It would take too much energy to get in the habit of betraying you.”

Spencer sounded exhausted by his own infuriation. Brendon resisted the urge to rub small circles into Spencer’s knees and thighs. After a second, though, Spencer laughed. It wasn’t a big laugh, but it was something. “I dunno, Ryan. Used to be the girls used me to get to you.”

Brendon smiled at that. He suspected Spencer often just hadn’t noticed all the ones who were setting their sights on him. If they weren’t disgustingly obvious about declaring their intentions, Spencer often missed the hints girls gave. Meanwhile, Ryan, whatever other failings he’d had with regard to girls, the ones who’d used Spencer had always pissed him off. Brendon hoped Spencer wasn’t feeling that way about Greta, whom he could only assume they were talking about.

Spencer said, “Nice segue, but I’m not going to play intermediary. I’m done managing your life.”

Brendon bit his lower lip. Spencer sighed. “I kinda did, Ry. If I’d just -- I mean, you guys are working it out now. Probably you could have then. And then all of this—“

And Brendon got that line of reasoning, but it didn’t make it any less incorrect. Ryan obviously had things to say, too, since Spencer was quiet for a long time. Finally, he said, “Come with us. On the next leg. Just to, I don’t know, see if we can figure something that isn’t this out.”

Then, “No, we hadn’t discussed it. I didn’t even know he’d invited you.”

Spencer’s fingers stroked through Brendon’s hair. “Ryan, if worst comes to worst, we can put you on a plane home. We’ve done this before.”

Brendon could practically hear Spencer rolling his eyes as he said, “Fighting doesn’t mean everything’s over. It means you disagree about something.”

There was another pause. “I’m starting to doubt there’s anything more fundamental than the two of you,” Spencer said, and hung up.

“Good eavesdropping?” Spencer asked, shifting Brendon’s weight around a little.

Brendon didn’t bother to act innocent. “He coming?”

“I think so. He’s at least seriously considering it.”

“Okay,” Brendon said.

Spencer squeezed Brendon’s neck. “The last time I told him to pack his bags, he did it. What’s so different about this time?”

“Spence,” Brendon said, but he wasn’t sure what came after that.

Spencer said, “I know,” and Brendon, selfishly, let it go.

*

Ryan hadn’t said anything about going on the next leg by the time they got back, but he did show up at the airport to pick them up, despite Zack having a car. Zack ruffled Ryan’s hair and said, “Thanks for takin’ ‘em off my hands.”

Ryan leaned into the touch a little, which earned him a hug, then Zack went off to see his wife for a bit before, as he put it, “I have to put up with Dumb and Dumber for another jaunt across the country.”

Ryan said, “You probably wanna crash, huh?”

Spencer said, “Food first. Something that was not desiccated before I ate it.”

Ryan nodded understandingly and took Spencer’s bag. Brendon said, “Oh, thanks.”

Ryan said, “I’m not your maid.”

For all that, Ryan helped Brendon put his bag in the car and took them to Taco Bueno, which was Brendon’s favorite fast food joint because it was the easiest place to get something without meat. Then Ryan drove them to Spencer’s house and asked, “Here or—“

“Here,” Spencer said. “And you’re staying, too.”

Ryan opened his mouth to argue. Spencer just got out of the car, came around and pulled Ryan physically out of the vehicle. Ryan said, “Oh. Okay.”

Ryan sucked slowly on his strawberry milkshake and asked about the tour. Spencer stole all the funny stories, but Brendon managed to get in a line or two, here and there. Since he was feeling tired enough to literally fall asleep at Spencer’s table, he considered it a win.

Brendon woke up when Spencer stood and said, “I’m taking a shower and crashing.”

Brendon blinked at him and Spencer laughed. “You know where the guest room is.”

Brendon did. Ryan looked uncomfortable and Brendon realized Ryan didn’t. He got up and tugged on Ryan’s hand. “C’mon.”

“Maybe I should let you get some sleep,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, just as soon as you make sure I don’t drown in the shower.”

“Um,” Ryan started.

Brendon stopped him with a kiss. It was sloppy and he almost missed Ryan’s mouth he was so damn tired, but it accomplished its intended end. Ryan, after a moment of shocked stillness, kissed back. He didn’t melt into Brendon or anything so easy as that, but he did give as good as he got, which, at the moment, wasn’t all that good.

Brendon pulled back after a moment. “We -- I’ve kind of been waiting for that to happen on and off for about four and a half years, or so, but I can’t—“

“Shower,” Ryan murmured knowingly. He pushed Brendon in the direction they’d been going and Brendon veered off at the correct door. He pulled Ryan in behind him and closed the door.

Brendon said, “Wanna get clean with me?”

Ryan laughed. “Is that what you use on all the boys?”

“Most of my lines involve dirtiness,” Brendon told him.

“Bren,” Ryan whispered.

Brendon pulled Ryan’s shirt over his head. “I saved the cleaning up for you.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Ryan said, but his hands were on the buttons of his trousers.

“Me neither. I just had a transatlantic flight.”

“Touché,” Ryan granted while toeing off his shoes. Despite starting after Ryan, Brendon was naked first. He resisted the urge to start kissing Ryan again, knowing he’d forget about the shower.

Ryan walked ahead of him. Brendon heard the shower start and shook his head, attempting to reboot his brain. By the time he got to the bathroom, Ryan was in the shower, waiting.

*

In the end, Brendon was too exhausted to do much of anything, despite being in his twenties, gay, and in a fucking shower with another dude. (His dream dude, as well, but he was very careful not to think things like that.) Brendon washed his hair twice, it felt so gross, scrubbed himself down, and made out with Ryan while they both smelled of soap and the water was still warm, beating against his back.

When it started to cool, Brendon said, “So, um, I—“

“Can barely keep from falling down?”

Brendon laughed against Ryan’s neck. “Something like that. Very sexy, I realize.”

Ryan reached around him to turn off the water, then tickled lightly at Brendon’s hip, in the spot Ryan _knew_ could make Brendon squirm. Brendon jerked away. “Play nice.”

Ryan smiled, not a grin, but something friendlier, almost. He pushed Brendon out of the shower and threw one of the towels at him. Brendon caught it and wrapped it around himself, shivering from the bathroom air.

“I could stay, and, y’know, nap,” Ryan offered from underneath the towel.

“Yes,” Brendon said, because he was tired of miscommunications.

Ryan came out from inside the towel and looked at Brendon, his eyes wide and thoughtful. Finally he said, “I think you’re kind of crazy.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.” Brendon wanted to say something about how that accusation wasn’t up to Ryan’s normal standards, but he was too tired to make it have the right amount of sarcasm.

“Panic’s doing well.”

Brendon shrugged, uncomfortable. He’d considered, at the time when he and Spencer had decided to take on the rest of the contract, that it might always feel just a little wrong, but he hadn’t realized how completely twisted it would sound in Ryan’s mouth.

“And currently, I’m an unemployed recovering alcoholic and coke addict.” Ryan crossed his arms over his knees and seemed to be studying the backs of his wrists.

“Yeah, well. There was a time when I was a Mormon kid without a home, and you were the guy holding onto my dreams without pushing me away from them.”

“That was a lifetime ago.” Ryan said, slowly. “And that guy cheated on you.”

Brendon rolled his eyes. “We both know the truth of that.”

“Maybe, but all the rest—“

“The things you say still mean something to me and the dreams you hold, even when you don’t share them, still feel right to me. For so, so fucking long I thought that would stop and I could find something easy or at least pedestrian, but I would be kidding myself to keep believing that. You walked out and I _still_ couldn’t fucking stop singing for you.”

Ryan swallowed and said softly, “I couldn’t stop writing for you.”

Brendon blinked. “What?”

“Reams of lyrics. I didn’t show them to anyone, but—“

“Do you still have them?”

Ryan rubbed a hand over his face and nodded sheepishly. “Couldn’t bring myself to—“

“I want them.”

Ryan looked at him. Brendon raised an eyebrow. “They’re for me, right?”

Ryan nodded again. Brendon said, “Then I want them,” and didn’t leave any room for argument.

*

Brendon woke by himself about ten hours later. He made his way to the living room and found Spencer and Ryan sprawled on the floor, clearly being pwned by the dogs. Brendon’s had stayed with Spencer, because Shane bitched if they made him go to two houses instead of one. (And if Shane wasn’t going to be available, it was more expensive to pay a sitter for two houses, so, either way, they traded boarding duties.) Brendon crawled right into the mess and took a while to satisfy himself that his dogs still loved him, or, alternatively, that he at least still tasted good to them.

Spencer made some calls when everything had settled, the three of them lying on the floor with the dogs curled up on their various parts. Brendon listened vaguely, just in case there was anything he needed to chime in about. Ryan’s fingers found their way beneath the hem of Brendon’s shirt and made patterns that did not help Brendon to think at all.

Spencer got off the phone and said, “No sex on the floor and no sex in front of me.”

“Speaking of,” Ryan said, without moving his hand, “Don’t you have a date tonight?”

Spencer looked over at Ryan. “What did she say about it?”

“She asked if you still liked Indian food and if you were a backseat driver.”

“And?”

“I told her that last I checked you were still fine with Indian and you were only ever a backseat driver when I was at the wheel.”

“Someone has to be,” Spencer and Brendon said at the same time.

Ryan lazily gave them both the finger. Spencer got back to the topic at hand with, “Indian, huh?”

“I didn’t ask any questions. It felt -- I wasn’t sure you’d want me to.”

Spencer didn’t say anything for a while. Finally, he offered, “You could’ve.”

“Her favorite color is deep blue. If you wanted to wear a shirt that color.”

“I know her favorite color, Ryan. I was actually present for most of the Honda Civic Tour.”

Ryan shrugged. “Just trying to be useful.”

“There’s that blue button-down you never wear,” Brendon spoke up.

“You still have that?” Ryan asked.

“You said it looked good on me,” Spencer answered, sounding more than a little defensive.

“It does,” Ryan said. “I mean, I remember it looking good.”

Brendon reached out a finger to poke at Ryan. “Fashion show time.”

“No,” Spencer said, but Ryan and Brendon were already getting up, already pulling him to his feet.

“Two against one, Spence,” Ryan told him.

“And Ryan’s one of the two,” Brendon added. Spencer sighed and came along.

*

Greta came to pick Spencer up at around seven. She came up to the door in the most adorable sundress Brendon had ever seen, despite having grown up with sisters and dated more than one woman. She hugged both Brendon and Ryan and chatted for a bit before Brendon did what clearly needed to be done, and shoved Spencer out of the house with her.

Ryan called after them, “You’d better be back by your curfew, young man.”

Spencer flipped him off. Brendon grinned and added, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!”

“Narrow it down there, why don’t you?” Ryan said. Brendon laughed. They went back inside the house and Ryan locked the door. There was a second where they both looked at each other and then they were pressing together, lips and arms and legs engaged in one very messy, upright making-out session.

Ryan broke off to say, “I haven’t killed the plant yet.”

Brendon panted. “I don’t think that really makes our actions more reasonable.”

“No, probably not,” Ryan admitted and dove back in.

They ended up on the floor, although Brendon couldn’t say who had begun the descent. His fingers fumbled against the hem of Ryan’s shirt and he tugged upward. Before, when they’d done this, Ryan had been all bone with just the slightest hint of skin stretched over. Ryan was hardly muscular or plump now, but he’d filled out in his own way, and Brendon could feel it under his fingertips.

Ryan’s hands were on him, too, strong and fervent in their touch. Brendon didn’t waste time—he could do that later, he’d been waiting too long to do it right then—with getting Ryan’s trousers down around his thighs and taking Ryan into his mouth. He was better now than he had been when they’d been each other’s firsts in that department, but it was still a messy process.

Ryan’s fingers fluttered around, like he wasn’t sure he had permission to touch now that things were getting serious. Brendon grabbed one of Ryan’s hands and placed it square on Brendon’s head. Ryan’s fingers curled almost as soon as they touched hair. He didn’t tug, but he did exert some pressure, like he was afraid Brendon might go somewhere.

Brendon hummed, mostly because humming was very close to breathing for him. Ryan said, “Motherfucker, Brendon,” in the most breathless, low tone Brendon had ever heard from him. When they were younger, it had mostly been weird, high-pitched squeaks and some moaning, but very rarely words. Words had been Brendon’s department.

Ryan’s breathing quickened and he tugged a little, with both hands. “Bren—“

Brendon pulled off but pinned Ryan’s hips down. This wasn’t something they’d done before, and Ryan repeated, “Brendon,” but then he came, helplessly, and Brendon closed his eyes, but otherwise didn’t move.

When Ryan was done, Brendon took a hand off Ryan’s hip to wipe at his eyes so that he could open them and look at Ryan. Ryan was blinking up at him.

“You should fuck me now,” Ryan said, more a demand than a suggestion.

“Aren’t you kinda—“ Brendon had done that once, letting someone fuck him right after an orgasm. It had been too much, uncomfortable as hell.

“Yes,” Ryan hissed, and rolled over on his side.

“Oh,” Brendon said. “Um, if you’re -- yeah, okay.” It was fucking unbearably hot that Ryan _wanted_ that.

Ryan asked, “Do you have—“

“Put ‘em in my pocket earlier.”

Ryan nodded. “Me too.”

Brendon pulled the condom out and wiggled out of his jeans and boxers. He slid it on and sucked on his fingers before using them to open Ryan up. Ryan said, “Yeah, that’s—“

“Mmm,” Brendon agreed. This wasn’t something they’d done with each other before. Neither of them had been ready at that point.

Brendon pushed in with the head of his cock and then drew in and out in slow pulses, rocking his way in. Ryan threw his head back against Brendon’s shoulder and Brendon licked playfully along the line of Ryan’s neck. “Should I touch—“

“No,” Ryan said. “No, I just. Just this.”

“Okay,” Brendon said, and worked himself all the way in, then staying for a bit, until Ryan’s breathing became just a little frantic. He took it slow, mostly because he figured that would stretch out what Ryan was getting out of it, but a bit because he had Ryan right then, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to let go again. He held out as long as he could before giving up, giving into his body.

Ryan rolled away from him, giving him a sideways, sated smile. Brendon responded in kind. Ryan mumbled, “We gotta clean the rug before Spence gets back.”

Brendon said, “Oh yeah.”

“Bed next time?”

Brendon grinned. “Sheets are easier to wash.”

*

Brendon and Ryan were making their way through a pint of Americone Dream when Spencer came back in at around one. Ryan held out the extra spoon they’d gathered just in case. “What did I say about staying out past curfew, young man?”

Spencer took the spoon and dug in without dignifying Ryan’s question with a response. Ryan nudged Spencer with his toe, even as Brendon said, “Details, man.”

Spencer shrugged. “We went out for Indian.”

“Spence,” Brendon whined.

Spencer grinned. Ryan took the ice cream from him. “Not until we get more.”

Spencer rolled his eyes. “I dunno, guys, she’s _Greta_. I mean, you saw. She looked awesome and we don’t have problems talking to each other for forever.”

Ryan made a big deal out of getting a piece of chocolate-covered cone out of the ice cream. “Why now?”

Brendon had been wondering the same thing, but felt it was kind of hypocritical to ask, given that Ryan and he were just now getting their shit together. Spencer stole the ice cream from Ryan. “I kinda think it was just never the right time before. I mean, I was with Haley for forever, and then she was dealing with the Hushies going their own ways and I don’t know. It’s not the first time we’ve ever noticed each other, but it is kind of the first time we’ve ever both taken the time to _look_, if that makes sense?”

Ryan took a bite of ice cream and held it in his mouth, considering Spencer. After a bit he said, “Yeah, okay. Some heavy looking going on now, though, since you guys totally made out.”

“Seriously? How do you—“ Spencer started.

Ryan smirked. “You get a look.”

“Really?” Brendon asked. “What’s it look like?”

Ryan gestured to Spencer’s face with his spoon. “Like that.”

“Oh, thanks.”

Spencer said, “You’re a dick.”

“Mm,” Ryan agreed. “So, was it a good kiss?”

“Also, like thirteen,” Spencer added. “And I was totally going to be discreet about the fact that the house reeks of sex, but now I don’t think I will.”

Ryan had the grace to blush, just a little. Brendon could feel his face light on fire. Even so, Ryan just hoarded the ice cream peaceably, occasionally letting Brendon have a bite.

Spencer finally gave. “Fine. It was awesome, okay? It was like that time when we were ten and Kate Foellenger let us use her for ‘practice’.”

Ryan got a faraway look on his face. “Holy shit. I’d totally forgotten about that.”

“Yeah, well, for some of us, it was our first kiss.”

Ryan laughed at that. “Dude, that chick in first grade didn’t count. It was on the cheek.”

“Whatever,” Spencer said.

“So, what I’m getting from this,” Brendon said, “is that you like kissing Greta. This means a second date, right?”

Ryan slid the ice cream back over to Spencer, who took another scoop. He tilted his head to the side and said, “She’s gonna be in Chicago when we’re there.”

Brendon grinned and held his fist out. Spencer dutifully bumped it with his.

*

The first couple of days on tour were disturbingly easy, with the way they all fit into each other’s routines without much having to work on it. Muscle memory kicked in and it was as if they had just taken a really long hiatus.

Ryan went to the first show, but he was so damn on edge afterward that Brendon made him stay on the bus for the second one. Well, he was allowed to hang out with Foxy, obviously, just not to actually watch the show.

When Brendon got back to the bus, Ryan was sitting at the table with his notebook and three milkshakes. Spencer asked, “Dude, there’s a McDonald’s nearby?”

“Kinda,” Ryan said.

Brendon slid in the booth across from Ryan and reached out to take a milkshake. Ryan took his hand and guided it to what was evidently the correct choice. Brendon took a sip. “Shamrock shake!”

Spencer took the shake left and asked, “What does kinda mean?”

Ryan shrugged. “I felt like a walk. I need walking shoes.”

Brendon peered down. Predictably, Ryan was in cowboy boots. “Yeah, those are probably better for riding, huh?”

Ryan looked like he was thinking about that. “Huh,” he said and scribbled something else in his notepad.

Spencer dropped a hand on Ryan’s head. “You got my favorite, too.”

Ryan didn’t look up. “I was hoping it was still the same.”

“Ry,” Spencer said.

Ryan hesitated, then looked up at him. Spencer asked, “You wanna go home?”

“Don’t really trust myself there,” Ryan admitted.

Spencer made Ryan scoot over and sat down next to him. “But you don’t want to be here?”

Ryan looked out of the window to where they were pulling onto the highway. Finally, he said, “I don’t have a place here.”

Brendon hated the way Ryan could sound lost and matter of fact all at once, the way he could make Brendon’s chest tight. Spencer pulled Ryan into him. “You do. It’s just not the spot you had.”

“Oh, am I the ship’s morale officer, now?”

Brendon and Spencer looked at each other. Spencer said, “Not if that’s a synonym for ‘camp prostitute’.”

Ryan loosened a little in Spencer’s arms, but said, “Well, if it’s the other meaning, whoa do you ever suck at hiring people.”

Brendon snickered. Then he said, seriously, “Lemme see the stuff you wrote.”

Ryan yawned. “S’on my laptop. In the ‘lyrics’ file, they’re more or less organized by month. Definitely the last six months. Kinda since the break.”

“You sure you don’t wanna—“

Ryan shook his head. “Easier.”

Brendon felt a little uneasy about invading Ryan’s privacy but if it made Ryan feel like he had some purpose there, if it kept him around, well, “Okay, Ry.”

*

Brendon hadn’t meant to snoop, honestly, but sitting right next to the lyrics folder was a folder entitled “Brendon is stupid and I hate him.” Brendon wasn’t known for his willpower.

He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry when he found every off-the-cuff (and not-so-off-the-cuff) cover he’d sent to Ryan. He wasn’t sure what he’d thought Ryan had done, but not this. If he’d been willing to think about it, he would have suspected Ryan had just thrown them away, some of them without opening them—evidently not.

Brendon closed out of the file and uploaded the lyrics folders to his flash drive. Then he went to pry Spencer from Ryan and their ongoing Mario Kart death match. It had been going on for the better part of the tour now, and Brendon didn’t want to be the one to tell Ryan he fucking blew and was never going to win, ever, but eventually someone was going to have to bring it to his attention.

For now, though, Brendon just needed Spencer, so he put the game to single player and told Ryan, “I promise to return him.”

He winced as he walked away, feeling like that might have hit too close, but Ryan didn’t say anything, so Brendon pretended he had dodged that bullet. They got to the table, far enough from the lounge that it would be fairly hard for Ryan to overhear, especially with the game playing. Brendon kept an eye on the corridor just in case.

Spencer said, “You okay?”

Brendon didn’t waste any time. “I need a piano.”

“You have a keyboard here and a piano at home. I take it neither of these are satisfactory?”

“I need a real piano, in the next, uh, week.”

“Week.”

“He kept all the songs, Spence.”

Spencer looked at him. Brendon elaborated, “All those covers—“

“I know what songs you’re talking about, I just don’t understand why this is news.”

Brendon tried again, “He _kept_ them all. In a folder.”

“I feel like we’re speaking different languages. Of _course_ he did. Ryan keeps everything from the people he loves. He still has t-shirts of mine he borrowed in the third grade, and pictures his father took of people Ryan doesn’t even know.”

“No, I know, I know that.”

“Oh,” Spencer said after a second. “You just still didn’t believe he loved you.”

“Not enough -- not after—“ Brendon thought about it. “No, I guess not.”

Spencer rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything except, “A piano, huh?”

Brendon managed an apologetic, “It can be an upright.”

Spencer rolled his eyes again, then laughed. “I’ll see what we can do.”

*

  


**Three Count**

  


*

Ryan discovered the new audiofile in the Brendon folder when they were in Chicago and he was supposed to meet up with Jon and Tom later in the evening. He’d been on edge all day, wanting things he couldn’t have to take the worst of it off. When Brendon and Spencer went for soundcheck, he found himself making a beeline for something to listen to on repeat, to take everything else from his mind.

He wouldn’t have even noticed, except he was going song by song, trying to figure out what he wanted. Brendon had titled the new file, “Sorry, I know I shouldn’t have looked, but I did.”

Ryan eyed the title of the folder guiltily and cringed. He should have remembered when he’d let Brendon borrow his computer. His stomach was in knots, but he had to open it and let it play.

It wasn’t what he was expecting. Ryan knew he had a habit of always expecting the worst, but that made sense in this instance, he was pretty sure. Instead, there was the steady, perfect strokes of Brendon’s fingers against piano keys. There had been afternoons when Ryan would lay on his back in Brendon’s house, listening to him play. That had been after Jac and Audrey, after those long months when they were both brittle next to each other, when they became something that was neither friend nor lover—something in between.

Ryan did the same now, closed his eyes and let Brendon sing, strong and high and a bit wistful about wanting to be Ryan’s harbor. Brendon sang, “Sail with me,” and Ryan wanted to. He sang, “The light in me, will guide you home,” and Ryan, despite himself, believed him.

He listened to the song over and over and over again until he opened his eyes to find Brendon standing above him. Ryan blinked and said, “You’re not stupid and I don’t hate you.”

Brendon plucked Ryan’s earphones off and sat down next to him. “Yeah, Ry. I know.”

“Also, I should tell you that I’m a recovering alcoholic and former cokehead with no job.”

“You’ve mentioned,” Brendon said softly.

“But I think—“ Ryan shook his head. “I know. I know this part. I’ve been in love with you since the day you started singing my words, making them real, carrying me to everyone and letting me be seen the way I wanted to be seen.”

“You don’t really need that anymore.”

“I do. I just wanted to believe I didn’t. And even if I didn’t, it’s not the only reason. It hasn’t been the only reason for a long time.”

Brendon reached out and tapped Ryan’s earphone. “I told you how I feel. Over and over.”

“I know. I was just. Sometimes metaphors are lies.”

“You don’t use them that way,” Brendon said.

“I know, but—“

“I learned from you.”

After a moment, Ryan said, “I’m just -- I’m gonna listen again, okay?”

“I’m gonna stay.”

“Yeah.” Ryan smiled. “That’d be good.”

*

Brendon said, “Come to the show tonight.”

Ryan had been coming on and off, but hearing the songs he’d performed made him feel like he didn’t fit in his own skin anymore. The songs that were new—had nothing of him in them—were in some ways even worse. Still, if Brendon was asking, Ryan was going to show because Ryan could get lost in his head sometimes, but he had noticed that Brendon hadn’t asked for much since the overdose.

“Should I wear bells?” Ryan asked.

“I like you best pantsless, but if bells is how you wanna do it, I’m not telling anyone how to dress.”

Ryan warned, “Be careful what you don’t say no to.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how that saying goes,” Brendon told him.

“Whatever,” Ryan said, and Brendon stuck his tongue out, which predictably ended in a lot of kissing.

Spencer had to come and drag Brendon away to makeup. Ryan gave Spencer an unrepentant look. Spencer gave Ryan a smile, one of the ones that was just between them and always had been. One of the ones that Spencer hadn’t even shared with Brendon, Ryan realized. Some part of Ryan that had still been curving against his insides, cutting at tender organs, settled into its proper place, where it didn’t hurt quite so much.

He went off in search of bells. He actually found some in one of the buses. He tied them around his neck with a shoelace and went up to the VIP area of the venue to crowd watch until the show. He wore a hoodie pulled up over his head, because nobody ever suspected a dude in a hoodie of being Ryan Ross. The fans had figured out that he was at certain shows, but they never caught him when he was like this.

Ryan closed his eyes and let himself sink into the thrum of the venue through the opener. He texted Z a bit while they were setting up for Panic. She was still pretending not to care that her band had fallen apart all around her. He had sent her four emails with baby animals in the last sixteen hours, so it seemed only natural to check up.

He tuned back into the show when Brendon and Spencer were on, and at first he couldn’t figure out what it was about this show that Brendon had wanted him to see. Of course, then they hit the point where Brendon usually shot the shit with the crowd before going into the second part of the set. Normally he said things about where they were, or asked people how they were doing, or just talked with Spencer.

Tonight he said, “So, Spence and I, there’s something we’ve been working on, and we’d like to try it out.”

The crowd went wild. Ryan leaned in a bit. Brendon grinned. “Yeah, it’s really raw, like, we just started on it about a week ago. And we can’t take credit for the lyrics, because those were written by someone else. They just really inspired us.”

Spencer must have said something, because Brendon turned around to him and, after a second, gave him the mic. Spencer said, “The lyrics were written by someone really important to both of us.”

“Yeah,” Brendon agreed, taking the mic back. “Yeah, so, um. Just listen, and like, tell us what you think.”

Ryan blinked, feeling breathless. Spencer started with a low drumbeat, rolling like distant, approaching thunder.

Brendon sang words that Ryan had written in rehab, scared of himself and alone, but not so alone as he had been before. Brendon sang about Rapunzel’s hair and Snow White’s dwarves and mostly he sang about Ryan, he sang, “Help is not a word I know how to say/not a place I know to ask you to be/not an end for someone like me.”

He sang and sang and when he was finished, he said, over the screaming over the crowd, facing Ryan’s direction. “I think they like it.”

Ryan pulled back his hoodie and grinned and said, “Yeah, maybe they do.”

There was more screaming, but Ryan didn’t notice. He didn’t think Spencer or Brendon did either. This wasn’t about the crowd, it was about them. After a long moment, Brendon laughed and said, “We’d better get on with it, so they don’t kick us out of this place before we’re done.”

Ryan laughed, and stayed until the end. He didn’t pull the hoodie back over his head. He didn’t look away. He didn’t close his eyes, not once. And he didn’t feel the need to run until the lights went down. Then he ran. He had people waiting for him.


End file.
